I'm a dev as well, and thus 'left brain' dominant, so I sometimes fantasize about buying a ticket to some foreign country and focusing on 'right brain' things l

I'm a dev as well, and thus 'left brain' dominant, so I sometimes fantasize about buying a ticket to some foreign country and focusing on 'right brain' things like learning a language, writing, traveling, making videos, etc. I've actually started to learn to Chinese in the past (through Pimsleur) and travelled to Taiwan where I could put it into practice. It was great fun, I miss it a lot, but ultimately I decided it's not as great an investment as learning programming stuff. I think if you are going to learn a new language, it really helps to live in a country where you will need to use it. Do you have much desire to travel to and/or live in Taiwan or China? Also, the best language learning hack is to find a partner that's fluent in the language you are attempting to learn, and ideally doesn't speak your language so well, so you are constantly forced to converse in the other language. Not sure of your relationship status, but it's another thing to take into account. I'm glad I started to learn another language. Even today, years after I've stopped actively learning Chinese, I still lookup Chinese phrases and can pick up small things when I hear people speaking it. Hell, not too long ago a waitress at a Chinese restaurant asked me 不要饭吗 (don't want rice?). I felt quite proud that I could answer back 要 (want). One major drawback of learning Chinese is the massive number of characters (both simplified and traditional) you'd have to learn to read it, though if you are just speaking it that issue will be alleviated, but it always helps to know the characters. That's another aspect of spoken languages - they are far more memorization heavy. As programmers, we need to focus more on learning concepts and principles, then quickly looking up specifics when needed. When speaking a language you don't have time to look up words or phrases, so you're heavily reliant on memory, and in general there's just a lot of stuff to memorize. Bit scattered and rambly, but hopefully this all helps in your decision.