I'd say the direction you are going is correct. And I would add that the big payoff is in understanding of fundamental problems, not libraries or algos. For ins

I'd say the direction you are going is correct. And I would add that the big payoff is in understanding of fundamental problems, not libraries or algos. For instance you should know how TCP/IP works and HTTP works (not just theoretical but hands on, i.e. know when to use curl, when the browser and when tcpdump for debugging). But you don't need indepth knowledge of the currently hip web framework because in 5 years it won't be hip anymore.