Would be great if you could give a little insight how exactly you started (which books, online tutorials... ) and in which order. Would you have done something differently?
and go ahead and build your first web application. You won't know Javascript yet, which will seriously limit the slickness of your interface, but that's alright for your first effort. These guys supposedly make deployment really easy:
http://yuiblog.com/crockford/ (download with netvideohunter firefox extension and watch sped-up with vlc, [ and ] keys control speed. I wish I'd taken notes.)
There are a lot of services on the internet that will convert PSD (photoshop) documents that 99designs guys make in to xhtml and css for a few hundred dollars. So you don't have to go deep in to design if you don't want to.
I wish I'd installed Ubuntu and learned to use the command line earlier; otherwise I wouldn't have gotten frustrated when trying to install software. I'd say once you've got Ubuntu running, read everything under Linux on this page:
Normally you want to be learning things on a just-in-time-basis, so you're learning something in order to apply it to some project. But system administration isn't like that because you don't know what you need to know.
As for regrets: I think I would have learned a lot faster if I'd given myself designated study hours. Probably half an hour a day to start, with gradual increase. Also, I shouldn't have been so hesitant to register for accounts and ask questions on forums, IRC channels, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Introduction-Comput...
If you're too poor to pay for it this book is available free online:
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html
This is probably the best place to get started with HTML and CSS:
http://htmldog.com/
Once you know regular CSS, if you're going to be designing your own sites, you should start using this (little known secret weapon):
http://compass-style.org/
I'd say once you understand all that stuff, learn Django
http://www.djangoproject.com/
and go ahead and build your first web application. You won't know Javascript yet, which will seriously limit the slickness of your interface, but that's alright for your first effort. These guys supposedly make deployment really easy:
http://www.webfaction.com/
Here's the best Javascript stuff I know:
http://yuiblog.com/crockford/ (download with netvideohunter firefox extension and watch sped-up with vlc, [ and ] keys control speed. I wish I'd taken notes.)
http://jquery.com/
http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/
If you've got capital you can hire other people to do design:
http://99designs.com/
http://www.designcontest.net/
http://www.designcrowd.com/
There are a lot of services on the internet that will convert PSD (photoshop) documents that 99designs guys make in to xhtml and css for a few hundred dollars. So you don't have to go deep in to design if you don't want to.
I wish I'd installed Ubuntu and learned to use the command line earlier; otherwise I wouldn't have gotten frustrated when trying to install software. I'd say once you've got Ubuntu running, read everything under Linux on this page:
http://code.google.com/edu/tools101/index.html
Normally you want to be learning things on a just-in-time-basis, so you're learning something in order to apply it to some project. But system administration isn't like that because you don't know what you need to know.
As for regrets: I think I would have learned a lot faster if I'd given myself designated study hours. Probably half an hour a day to start, with gradual increase. Also, I shouldn't have been so hesitant to register for accounts and ask questions on forums, IRC channels, etc.
Paul Graham has more tips: http://paulgraham.com/pfaq.html