> When I play with code outside of work, it's usually to learn something, not write something useful. I have almost nothing on Github because most of what I've done outside of it has been things that already have solutions out there; I just want to learn more about the problem, rather than seeing some deficiency in the existing solution.

This is what gets me. Yes, hirer, I have a github profile, and yes, you'll probably be disappointed. I occasionally do bug fixes and file issues, but 99% of what I do is on private repos. And no, I can't show them to you. I've open sourced a grand total of 1 repo, but that doesn't mean I don't like coding. I just find my brain spent after a 40 hour work week of programming.