I just found out about The Odin Project, a self-paced online course to learn full stack web development. There are two paths: one is Ruby on Rails and the other is full JavaScript and nodejs. I am leaning more towards Ruby but I wanted to get some more opinions from folks in the field.
Go the JavaScript route. React is the most popular front end technology rn, and Node is also really common. You’ll have the best chance at either contributing to projects, or getting a job this way
You will not find much to do with Ruby. Node is more popular and more in demand. A lot companies and OSS project have o Node. Ruby is very niche.
To add on to the other top comment right now, it’s not like learning a spoken language. Once you know one, you can pick up another similar language without too much bother. Or should be able to, if you’re not crap.
As for what employers want to see, that’s something I’m less qualified to tell you.