This is pretty amazing. OP made a comment about people not hating on those who enjoy coding and you came and called them naive. Plenty of people code outside of work, on personal projects, and are not being taken advantage of.
It's all very nice disparaging people for having found a passion, but when I read Masters of Doom, I didn't pity John Carmack and John Romero and their gang for programming all week, then 'borrowing' work computers to program and play D&D all weekend. I admired them. They found a thing they loved to do with people they loved to do it with.
Other people have to do many things to be happy, but they found it all there! These were incredibly intelligent, incredibly creative people expressing their intelligence and creativity. They weren't lesser men for their passion. It elevated them.
You're right, we shouldn't disparage people for working long hours in pursuit of their passion. But we absolutely should disparage investors and founders who seek to exploit this youthful passion and energy to enrich themselves without fair compensation. The tricky part is actually defining what's fair.
John Carmack and friends were working for their own company, mind. That's not the same as a startup employee, even with options.
I have children, a SO that helps me see when I'm being taken advantage of, and I love to code. It augments my career (data scientist/economist), gives me interesting problems to solve related or unrelated to my work field, lets me build a personal brand should I want via github, and opens my eyes to more possibilities in the world.
Were it my job to build code, I would probably focus on the other aspects of my current role (statistics, ML, forecasting, etc.).
Keeps the ax sharp, fun to do, and leads to great friendships and networks.
I guess I could spend _all_ my time outside of family and work doing something like strategy board gaming, which I find enormously fun, but I guess I see such things are more like spice in life.
It's not really about your interests, it's about you being naive.