"can you explain to me how Michael Bloomberg would be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?" Because God forbid the man should have a fucking hobby! How do playing Tekken, or watching The Avengers, or eating cake, make you better at your job? Why the hell should they? Is it so difficult to imagine that he might like to do a thing that isn't related to running New York every now and again? Just as some people who aren't mechanics fix up cars in their weekends, and some people who aren't professional directors make movies in their spare time, some people write code as a hobby, and if you've forgotten that there can be enough joy and reward to motivate someone to spend time on a coding project for the sheer love of it, then it's probably a blessing you don't have to spend your working day writing code anymore.