I would learn (as someone who is interested in backend stuff - scalability, high-performance systems, apis) related to web-work: - HTTP - C (because it teaches

I would learn (as someone who is interested in backend stuff - scalability, high-performance systems, apis) related to web-work: - HTTP - C (because it teaches you how computers work a bit) - One of the new JVM languages (either Clojure or Scala, preferably the first) - some bash (for scripting) Realistically that is a lot to learn in a year. On top of that I'd start dabbling with Javascript but not expect to learn it this year (that's for next year).