When I think real-time I think embedded programming. In particular, formal methods and scheduling. This is an understood canon of work, so there are lots of goo

When I think real-time I think embedded programming. In particular, formal methods and scheduling. This is an understood canon of work, so there are lots of good textbooks, courses, etc in the area. When I think latency I think really fast. The nice thing about that domain is that each piece is quite important. Even just getting the data from Reddit in a timely/efficient/optimized manner is an interesting puzzle in its own right. Personally, I'd focus on those components, work out what makes them really fly, write some interesting stuff.