I think the problem, for me, is that people turn tinkering on something INTO the hobby. People will spend years tweaking their 3d printer to have the perfect settings and have a bunch of weird plastic things attached that make it look like something from Tron but will never design and print anything useful. Same with so many things, the guy mentioned neovim and it's the same there. I am not here to judge people's hob…
Most notably, for example, instead of having fun playing video games, I spent time benchmarking my hardware, making charts and graphs comparing the different hardware I owned. (There's a place for that, but I was no Anandtech!) And then I'd buy a new video card, run benchmarks for a week, and then forget to play any games.
I also spent a LOT of time making a French cleat wall in my workshop. And building a workbench. And making a mobile table for my miter saw. The tools all saw more use making the workshop than they did building the things.
On the other hand... when my spouse said "could you build a bed frame for our mastiff?" I made a beautiful, very functional, perfectly fitted bed frame with a latching gate over the course of a few hours, assembled and in use. I was ready. I had tinkered so much I was pretty good at the final pursuit. (For deeper context for those that care, we would totally let our mastiff sleep in our bed, but she kicks while she dreams. Without the fencing / gate on her personal Twin XL bed, she would just hop in the bed as soon as we fell asleep, and we'd wake up to her sitting on us or kicking us. She happily goes into her personal bed space at night when she's ready to move from sleeping somewhere else to sleeping in her bed for the night.)