[dillydally]

If you're doing web work you need to do two things:

1. Buy a Linux or Mac computer, because all the standard parts work quickly and simply on those platforms and are difficult to run on Windows. That, or have a remote computer where you do your dev work.

2. Learn Ruby or Python. It doesn't matter which. People on HN seem to love Python, but there's no substantial difference if you're using them to build web applications.

[dingle_thunk]

Why buy a new machine? http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/ http://virtualbox.org

[dmor]

#1 is really good advice, and not just because of the pretty hardware. It's really easy (from my experience anyway, as a relatively new developer) to get derailed by having setup issues, so opt for something that removes as much friction as possible