[doubleplus]

I asked a freelancer friend of mine a few months ago: "If I want to work for myself, what language would I learn to reach that point in the quickest fashion?" He told me to learn JavaScript/Ajax. Of course I see now that nothing is so simple... I've had to catch up on how to utilize other tools I'd rarely touched before (like CSS), and I feel compelled to learn PHP, MySQL, etc at the same time. So while I was hoping to reach some level of employable proficiency by summer, it's looking more like it'll be the end of the year.

I'm at work so I don't have time to read the other comments, but I'm sure someone's mentioned SICP and various videocasts, and yeah Python is supposed to be a good learning language. I've heard starting with JS might not be so great b/c of its idiosyncracies. No, still working on apps/sites, nothing finished.