I have never gone out of my way to learn a computing skill specifically for a job (or even for a "dream"). All was always out of personal interest. By that method, I have accumulated a skill set (including Ruby/Rails programming) that has allowed me to start my startups when the opportunity was there.
You should be wary of even being a programmer if your primary driver to learn new things is what might be useful to your career. All good programmers I know and know of would be learning and applying their programming skills whether or not there was money involved.