Ask HN: Developers – how do you stay up to date?
So some background. I've started to code around 15 years ago. I've started from C and C++, learned Java. Coded many things for fun (IRC Bot, A never finished OS Kernel, a never finished graphics engine, basic 2D Game with SFML, Qt Sprite editor, Java based ICQ Clone and etc).
At some point I've switched to PHP with HTML, CSS and JS which got me my first job around 10 years ago. Since then, I consider myself a web developer - a title that on one hand feeds me and pay my bills (and I'm very grateful for that) and on the other hand - is not really that fun and or rewarding (more on that later). Around 6 years ago I've developed interest in Node.js via side project which eventually helped me to land a Node.js job and get away for the slowly dying PHP. In my spare time I continued to explore Node.js, moved to TypeScript, developed skills in FE frameworks such as React.
And recently I woke up and found myself in my early thirties, no longer the young kid with "unlimited" free time to try and explore different areas and fields (game dev, os dev, desktop applications) and having troubles to run behind all the new tech and cool stuff that keeps popping up.
And here I stand, asking my self: How do I move next? Since the field that PHP and JavaScript occupies are relatively easy to get it, eventually it will be overfilled with younger developers and in order to stay in that market, I'll need to provide extra on top of my Node.JS knowledge. And I eager to do more harder and rewarding stuff other than writing API Gateways that fetch and write data to DB.
So hence my question: What's next? How do you stay up to date? Do you continue to explore your current field of employment and staying in a small set of languages? Do you try different fields? Do you have side projects and are they related to your jobs field? Are you trying to develop in one way (i.e. Backend Engineer) or trying to be the "Jack of all trades" (i.e. Backend, Frontend, Desktop, GameDev)?