One thing I would like to point out, that you probably won't like to hear .. If your purpose is to learn how to "hack" to the point where you can make real webapps, you should be aware of two things. 1. You will never become a good hacker if you are only doing it for the money or for the recognition. You have to be able to love the code for the sake of the code itself. You have to be able to see the beauty in the cod…
I really agree. I think there's probably a lot of people out there who read about Gates and Brin and Page and Zuckerberg, and say, "omg I want to be a haxor it wud be fun and I can make $$$!". I hate to say it, but if you really wanted to hack, you would have done it before you read about how much money haxors are making. You would have started like us, in QBASIC, because you were exhilarated at the thought of controlling that computer screen...