[Tycho]

Read Techcrunch? Why? So you can daydream more lucidly about $40m exits?

From my journey so far, I think the foundation is understanding HTML and CSS and the DOM and basic Javascript interactions. It can take a few months for that stuff to sink in, but then you barely need to think about it going forward, it doesn't clog your thought-process. From there you could do a fair bit of actual coding, leveraging frameworks like jQuery and the various layout and template resources. You will get the hang of cross-browser stuff as you go. The next level is Ajax and server-side stuff, which IMO involves getting past a lot of over-coupling inherent in the technology, so that, again, will take a while to sink in. I suppose understanding databases would be a good idea but could perhaps be put off for a while.

Also I think it really helps to have someone you can meet regularly and quiz about development. It beats endlessly googling for an answer that makes sense from your perspective.