But I'm limited by my technical skills. I'm well-verse in Javascript, decent in PHP but have zero knowledge in Linux. I tried using APE(ajax push engine) but the learning curve is way too steep. Node.js require linux environment as well. But I really really want to build a web application which i could be proud of, something that is of use to people and maybe to remind myself that i'm not a lousy programmer after all.<p>I need some advise.
In my opinion you're doing it the wrong way around, it's really hard to just make something if you wanna work with a technology. All in my humble opinion of course.<p>If you come up with the idea first, like you said one that people can use, you're really more motivated to make it!<p>If Javascript is a language you feel confident in, I would suggest you do try and take up Node.js. I've played around with it and it makes making real-time web applications a breeze.<p>You could try making a realtime chat client that leverages websockets and something like Redis. There are probably a ton of those around but you can learn a lot from making one.<p>There are also a lot of getting started documents for node so zero knowledge of Linux shouldn't be a problem.<p>hope this helps!