I learned out of necessity. At the time in the late 90s and early 00s, Sourceforge was big (It was Github of the time). There were multiple projects that I used

I learned out of necessity. At the time in the late 90s and early 00s, Sourceforge was big (It was Github of the time). There were multiple projects that I used and wanted to make modifications to, so I learned the languages that they were implemented in to do that. Over the years, those changes became less minor. Eventually I started hosting a spinoff of Livejournal (LJ was/is? open source), and my users were asking for private messaging, so I added it by learning Perl. It was a great experience. I mostly made sure that I was having fun and scratched my own itch.