I focus on areas I'm curious about, it doesn't matter whether or not it's super applicable at the time. The most important thing about hobby work is that it's

I focus on areas I'm curious about, it doesn't matter whether or not it's super applicable at the time. The most important thing about hobby work is that it's about fun and edification. Keeping four languages in my back pocket is my safety net: one to pay the bills (C++), one for automation (Python), one for intellectual curiosity (Ada), and one for a possible job at a future date (Rust). I've also done deep dives into Ruby and Haskell just to see what's there. > mostly systems work Ada is a weird choice that really teaches you to think about the intent of what you're doing and has a tool called Alire that makes getting a toolchain up and running easy. There's a lot you can do on the low level (easily bind to C, make custom memory allocators, bit manipulation, etc.) but the syntax is straightforward enough I can walk away for months and then jump back into it with no problem. Since you're coming from C, it should feel like a strongly-typed C. As a software engineer, doing hobby work in Ada significantly improved my ability to think through the intent and design of what I'm doing.