I have been programming for over 30 years now in a professional capacity.

Much of it was C++ ex- and intensively; it still remains my favorite programming language and I am quite glad it seems in for a popularity boost lately.

In addition to that I have done a lot of C#/.NET.

For web programming PHP/JS/TS (more recent) and APS/ASP.NET (older).

I work a lot with databases, because most data -if not all- needs to go into a database. 99% SQL-based, played a bit with other approaches, but not a big fan. Probably is due to the problem domains I have been working on so far and SQL-prevalence in a lot of business software. Backends mysql/mariadb,sqlite3,mssql,postgres...

In parallel I have worked (far too much) with the incarnations of a large ERP software package (has a full year in its name now) for 20+ years and I hope that's finally over. The knowledge is still there, though; as they say, trauma fades slowly.

Generally I have always aimed for polyglot programming, if not an outright language agnostic approach. If scripting does it, use a scripting language, don't bring out the heavy hitters like C++/Java/C# for no good reason. If you need efficient long running background services, use what can manage.

Admittedly function follows form, too, so my start at the age of 15 with C++ probably scarred me for life when it comes to design approaches. It certainly took me 10 years to get rid of several self-taught and self-imposed evil habits in that language. Sometimes "whatever works" is not good enough, if it is ugly, unstable, unreliable and subject to chance.

I have been running and administering my own servers for 20 years as well, at times a whole rack of them, various Linux distributions and the one-off Windows machine, but with the ever increasing density and processing power of hardware, I have finally gotten rid of that setup and moved everything to a single machine in the cloud. I am one guy, how much processing power do I need. ("Lots..." a grating voice whispered) A bit sad, really, but no longer commercially viable (considering hardware,uplink,power and cooling costs) to do it yourself. Also 1Gb/s redundant connection in the DC offers quite a bit of an advantage over a single 8Mbit/s business line (max in my area).

So why am I in IT? I don't know. It just happened back then. I originally wanted to do something else, but I've been in IT for so long, I have forgotten what that was.