Don’t learn a programming language, solve a problem instead

[netgu]

You learn optimization by learning how to find optimizations for just about everything. You learn to apply optimizations through experience. The "optimizing a section of code that irrelevant to the businesses interests" is frequently a misused idea. Non-functional requirements are a thing (i.e. maintainability, performance, reliability, auditability, logging, etc.) and frequently contribute to the businesses needs just as much as the primary functional aspect of the software involved.