I guess, what I’d like to hear from you all is a way to jump back in as quickly as possible in such a way that it may be a career.
You might check job listings in your region/country to figure out what languages and technology stacks are in high demand, as where you are seems to matter a lot.
I use xmpp. It happens to be a great fit for a private family messaging service. Good interoperability between modern clients. I get that "nobody uses it" is hyperbole, but the internet is a big place and there is room for services without mass market appeal to thrive.
I don't think it was the point of your post necessarily, but I did want to mention a couple of things that might make the Linux switch a little easier - if not for you, anybody else reading and agreeing.
First, distrobox (https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox) is a nifty frontend for podman/docker that I think makes it a little more usable/accessible without having a PhD in devops. Basically helper scripts that create a series of simple CLI commands that let you launch a new environment, enter the new (or old) environment, do stuff in the environment, exit the environment. Keeps your core system's python separated from your development environment(s). Sacrifices the isolation qualities of containers in favor of usability, so probably ok for dev work on a desktop and not so much for production on a server.
Also, there are GUI applications for point and click management of distrobox - I use BoxBuddy, which is available as a Flatpak on Flathub, so again no interference with the core system provided it can run podman and flatpak.
Second, I know the php dev world figured out ways to abstract some docker complexity away with stuff like ddev (https://github.com/ddev/ddev) and lando (https://github.com/lando/lando). I wonder whether other languages have or will build that dev environment in a box abstraction on Docker/Podman/whatever.
Reminder that Obama won Florida. Also that Trump performed worse in Texas in 2016 and 2020 than McCain and Romney in their prior runs. Florida got weird, but Texas has looked close to flipping for a while now.
This is not about quality and costs
It is about quality and cost for the majority of purchasers that worry about meeting a budget. Virtually anybody making purchase decisions on some sort of surveillance system will grapple with that issue. My point is that we all tend to want the best performance for the least cost, and breaking that habit for the less tangible purposes of domestic security or human rights somewhere else is why we will continue to see these articles about Hikvision/Dahua cameras getting deployed at times and in places they probably shouldn't.
Dahua and Hikvision are deployed everywhere because they are high quality and low cost. It poses an interesting dilemma (extending beyond cameras) for the U.S. and allies trying to break dependence on vendors under partial ownership and alleged control of the government in China. Should we subsidize domestic vendors to tilt the scale? Simply banning the high quality low cost option doesn't seem to accomplish much.
Fair, I presume you are correct in how it will be applied. That said, given that Reddit has only ever burned cash, there has to be some connection to gravity...I think?
Probably a good thing, imo. Better than selling data for AI farming and blitzing the site with ads. Hopefully it isn't the start of the entirety of Reddit going behind a subscription wall. Curating private digital communities is a good option.
I'm not the right person to address anything there...far beyond me. But this line seems under-emphasized: "Maybe part of the blame is a lack of investment...in the XMPP developer community."
I use Google files in an effort to minimize the amount of 3rd party software on my phone - particularly when it comes to file access.
Sad news. Here is a link to an impact study (PDF), which describes many (all?) of the projects that benefited from funding. But a few you may recognize include Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon:
Other couple ideas to consider if job ambitions aren't a major thought:
Nim-lang / Mummy. Neat in being high level like python but compiled and can do low level stuff. Small ecosystem but good interoperability with c and Python. Can also compile to js. Target embedded to web, very flexible.
Also php. Some people say modern php looks more like java. Either way, lots faster than it used to be. Wildly productive language for web stuff. Laravel or Symfony frameworks.