TL;DR: Yes.
Developers often ask me which language or tool they should use or learn. I have definite opinions on good and bad tools for various tasks, but the most important tip is to continue learning new technologies. This gives you joy in your life, prevents burnout, and provides a platform when the time comes to move on from your current technology.
For your day job, you want a language that is stable or increasing. It doesn’t matter if it is outside the top ten in rankings like the TIOBE index. For example, Oracle’s proprietary PL/SQL database language has been hovering around place number 20 for many years, and PL/SQL programmers are not likely to be out of a job anytime soon.
But you still need to continually add to your skill set. People who keep doing the same thing lose the joy and wonder of making something work, which is often what got them started in IT in the first place. To prevent burnout, carve out time to work on something new every week.
Don’t expect your employer to give you this time. In some organizations, you might be able to use allocated training time to learn something on your own, but even Google’s famous “20% time” for side projects is 20% on top of the 100% you already work.
You should be grateful you have the privilege to work in IT. To keep that privilege, you should invest time in yourself and your life.
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