[j21]

Whatever language you choose, I think you need to at least be able to work a little with javascript, since it's ubiquitous on the web.

As for myself, I picked Java and GWT for a first app since I'm familiar with Java. Going this route exposed me to the full stack of web development(front/back, server admin, security, databases, etc.) rather than staying confined to a language specific tutorial. In the process I found I needed to use javascript quite a bit (using Facebook APIs, integrating with Mixpanel for analytics, etc.) Now I'm looking to learn more javascript, as well as a sexier web language like python or ruby haha.

Anyway, the front-end of a web application will be HTML, CSS and javascript; the backend is what will have the other languages like php, ruby, etc.