This is good advice. As a somewhat older (42) programmer whose early career was similar to what OP is describing I've been focusing on embedded systems and mos

This is good advice. As a somewhat older (42) programmer whose early career was similar to what OP is describing I've been focusing on embedded systems and most recently Android development -- granted, Java isn't C and there are quite a few things I dislike about the language (and moreso the AbstractFactoryOfFactoriesClass culture it tends to have) but it is (practically speaking) MUCH closer to the sort of desktop app development that we used to do than either of back or front end web development (which I also don't really enjoy).