As well as a job, I too am a hobbyist programmer, and have nothing ready to show for it. Bunch of shell scripts, impressive idempotent .emacs, some half-baked ML projects galore.

I don’t see why it is so surprising. Finishing and polishing something off is often 80% of the work and 20% of the fun, if you’re not paid for it then why bother if it’s a hobby?