I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
Phrasing in things like job descriptions is actually my partner's area of expertise, and some of it's rubbed off on me. I could talk about whether you should ask for it, but I'm inclined to think that most of the time, "passion" is a catchy-sounding space-filler like, "detail-oriented" or "team player" that HR or recruitment agents put in because they can't think of anything original.
Phrasing in things like job descriptions is actually my partner's area of expertise, and some of it's rubbed off on me. I could talk about whether you should ask for it, but I'm inclined to think that most of the time, "passion" is a catchy-sounding space-filler like, "detail-oriented" or "team player" that HR or recruitment agents put in because they can't think of anything original.
To me, the term and question regarding passion is just another poor rewording of the same questions that have been around for a long time.