>I'm interested in learning languages like C, Zig, Go, & Rust, but should I try to get a job as a software dev or just try be an electrician or something else?
Yes if you want to learn how computers work, not if you want to get a job, due to your language preference selection, i can tell your more into the 'systems-level' side of things, rather then domain specific or application-level languages.
If you want to learn how computers work, learn C, its what all modern operating systems use or are inspired by, DONT learn;
-C++, since its got low adoption and failed to replace C as a systems language
-java, since it was created atop C as a C replacement (again) and failed to be more portable then C, with the JVM breaking on many older/more obscure operating systems and ridden with ridiculous bugs
-zig,rust,muoun,golang again more unlindy C replacements whos reference implementations began in C anyway
-.NET with C# F# and VB, since its basically microsofts java
-Assembler, since compilers can now spit out more efficient and fast assembly then hand-written asm, UNLESS if you want to learn a certain CPU/MCU
-SQL, since its written in C and has a domain-specific use case anyway (we're looking for generic computing here)
-Delphi/Object Pascal, Pascal,Oberon,Modula-2 are good if you want to learn Swiss-styled computing alongside Project-Oberon, but nowadays most things are only Writh-inspired rather then directly using it, so its utility wears thin quick
-Javascript/typescript are written atop C and deliberately target browsers, cutting off any hardware older then 15 for most serious development/testing (i know i say this as i make a post to a JS-heavy site, but the computer i'm doing it from isnt the one i use the learn about operating systems on)
-alef, erlang and limbo, early java-like languages with a little bit of concurrency and network-transparency that were bundled with certain niche operating systems that see little support or focus nowadays, both implemented in C regardless
-Fortran,COBOL,BASIC, outdated boomer languages far outclasses by their successors Lisp,Scheme,C and shell
-R,MATLAB,TeX,Prolog,lisp good domain-specific languages for non-programmers in academic fields regardless, NOT suitable for your (assumed use-case)
-Ruby,perl, alright web-oriented text processing languages that often just are surpassed by plain UNIX shell and awk, including my listed alternatives, all 4 are thin C wrappers anyway, and most PC-regexps dont see full utilisation anyway
-Lua,Elixer interesting, smaller VM-heavy languages with fewer keywords that have their place, but again, are always above operating systems
-Haskell,OCaml, interesting functional languages that still have no systems written in then
-Shell/BASH, since microsoft hasnt (quite) moved over to a full UNIX backend, meaning that operations with heavy file I/O only work on certain places, and the gap between them and the massively verbose powershell is insane
-GMscript and so on, again, only teaches you the engine, not the system below
-Scratch beyond useless if your above 10
And ESPECIALLY NOT python, since when you learn python, you only learn how the python ecosystem itself works, and with no backwards compatibility, by the time python 4 comes out, all your learning will be in vain, unlike C whos 'language ecosystem' is literally just all popular kernels and compilers anyway, Regardless, python is just a slow, interactive C wrapper with handholding error reporting, making it good to teach beginners basics like loops and variables in (which already exist in C), but useless to directly control hardware or networks without a bajillion libraries
The verdict (if your goal is to learn about computers at the system level) is pretty clear;
-Learn C
This is because;
-C is everywhere, even ffmpeg is written fully in C, meaning you can rosetta-stone audio/video codecs to learn about them directly SO LONG as you know C
-Anything that isnt C or dosent want to be C is either in C or not suitable at the system level
