Comfortable enough now with frontend work using React after roughly a year of steady practice, and I have decided it is time to actually start learning proper backend development too, mostly so I can eventually build complete projects entirely on my own without needing to rely on someone else specifically for the backend portion of any idea I might want to actually build myself going forward.
The obvious choice on paper would be sticking with JavaScript through Node, since I already know the language reasonably well from frontend work and would not need to simultaneously learn an entirely new syntax while also learning genuinely new backend concepts for the very first time. But a few people I have specifically asked for advice keep suggesting Python instead, mainly because it apparently reads more clearly for an actual beginner and has, according to them, a gentler overall learning curve for someone new to backend concepts specifically.
Part of me worries that learning an entirely new language and new backend concepts simultaneously might genuinely slow me down more than the supposed readability benefit of Python would actually make up for in practice, though I do not have any real firsthand experience yet with either specific option to properly judge that concern myself.
Long term I do not have any particular fixed backend specialization goal yet, more just wanting to become a genuinely more complete and independent developer overall rather than one who can only ever really build the frontend half of any given project idea I might come up with in the future.
For people who learned backend development after already being comfortable specifically with frontend work first, did sticking with the same language you already knew actually make the transition meaningfully smoother, or did switching to something new entirely end up being genuinely fine either way once you actually got properly started?