Designer eager to become Developer

Choice of language is pretty much a matter of comfort when you're first learning. The question is, do you want to be using Ruby/Rails or PHP/Wordpress/Codeigniter/etc. If you're just learning, you're going to <i>want</i> to code in whatever language you choose. Just for reference, you can create backends for websites in Clojure, Java, Python, Haskell, go, JavaScript(node.js), etc as well.<p>I'd say use Ruby/Rails if you want to create webapps and PHP/etc if you want to create Wordpress sites. Someone more experienced than me in these languages can comment further.<p>Heroku.com supports Ruby and from using it with Clojure and node.js apps, I highly suggest this route even if you enjoy setting up your own servers. You can also use providers like Amazon EC2/Joyent/Rackspace and set up your own box to be either a LAMP stack or Ruby/Rails.<p>There is a long list of Databases to choose from these days, including: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Riak, CouchDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc.<p>Truly the answer you're looking for is "Just start somewhere". The amount of tech you can choose between is dizzying and you'll eventually get to a point where you can make your own decisions if you just keep hacking.

I'd say the stack to learn depends on what you want. Basically, the best bet for a job anywhere is knowing LAMP plus frontend (which you already can). I think rails/ruby is prolly going to be harder but if thats what you like then go for it :) As far as apache goes if you just want a job as a developer basically all you need to know is mod_rewrite aka regex, and some really basic other stuff like virtualhosts, etc that you can learn in a day. On the other hand SQL is going to be harder, learning "enough" shouldn't be a problem, but to know how to use joins,views,triggers,migrations , etc is something you should start on in tandem with your programming language. I know too many developers who don't concentrate enough on knowing/managing their data when this is always the heart of your application. As far as hosting goes, with LAMP you all you need is a nix machine somewhere, I'd suggest getting a linode (<a href="http://www.linode.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.linode.com/</a>). This also has the added bonus of great docs and you can try out and teach yourself everything on your own machine w/out crappy cpanel stuff.<p>Good luck!!

A LAMP stack will be easier to deploy simply because pretty much any cheap hosting you get as a playground will support it out of the box. Rails is a little more tricky to deploy. That said, Ruby and Rails is, in my opinion, more fun than an equivalent in PHP (pure opinion though so don't let that colour <i>your</i> experience).<p>I would suggest taking one bite at a time - find the easiest deployment possible for your chosen stack (if it's rails, then deploy some test projects to heroku). Learn to program a little before trying to jump in and do the Apache setup etc. Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to see your creation on-line but you just keep hitting your head against a brick wall because you can't deploy. I'll also put in a good word for webfaction for good cheap hosting that supports rails, django, and php very nicely without you having to do a lot of server admin - perfect for a playground.

I would just begin to expand on your back-end skills. Since you have HTML/CSS/JQUERY under your belt. Continue to work on those, and also begin with a database (MySQL works fine), once you learn basic database-ing, then begin working on the controlling logic between the two. I would recommend PHP only because it's a quick language to learn and get busy with. This gives you a solid set of skills and a good view of the process. From there you can begin to enhance what you do with the two.<p>Nothing needs to be super-advanced, get down and dirty and learn quickly; more advanced work will come with time. As biscarch said 'just start somewhere'.

You have to decide what kind of developer you want to be. A hobbyist would probably go with the most out of the box stuff, so would use something like rails. You could be a specialist developer who only knows one framework and language. Or if you want to be a total pro you will want to learn all the frameworks because you are very adverse to your coworkers knowing anything you don't.