It means you likely cared enough to devote your own time to learning for the sake of learning. And a lot of engineers look at this kind of thing as important an

It means you likely cared enough to devote your own time to learning for the sake of learning. And a lot of engineers look at this kind of thing as important and screen for it in interviews. The curious thing is, I think the number who regard it as important is likely far higher than the number who actually do it. Which is understandable; once you reach a level of seniority you also have many other demands on your time and may not be able to be a hobbyist anymore on top of day job, family commitments and so on. So maybe once you learnt every new language but now you don’t have the opportunity, or you have decided to “go deep” in just a few, established languages. So the power of the signal is highly variable depending both on where the interviewer and interviewee are in their lives. Also, knowing JS in the late-90s did indicate a curious and ambitious developer. It only went mainstream later...