If you haven’t seen it I have a list of books I like on my blog. Also have some simple tutorials for learning php for things like web scraping, posting and automation.

http://oooff.com/php-suggestions/php-learning-suggestions-menu.php

My experience is those out of work, starving people all of the sudden value their time enormously when it is time to start talking about a job or project for what is essentially a commodity product.

I also want to learn PhD level math because that is another area of weakness for me - I dont have time for that, but wanting to learn should not be viewed as me not knowing quite a bit about other areas.

Either you’re high, or you’re a liar.

From what we have come to love about you, you are in the business of being rich - not trying to learn how to write scripts and be diorexmoney.

Cheers Nick.

Just an example…but if you need to manage a group of people programming a script to snipe auctions on ebay. You would be in a much better position to faciliate smooth and constant progress with a few basic ’spaces’ knowings. For example…

knowing that ebay is a series of forms, beginning with some form of session based authentication.(html)

and knowing that php + cURL is the most common combination for automating form submissions(php)

and knowing that network speeds across the internet are variable, and due to be held up(infrastructure)

and knowing that a snipe on ebay is an extremely time sensitive action(ebay experience)

and knowing that users are attracted to sturdy, fluid, & reliable interfaces(ui design)

chances are…if you were going to building this(and it’s not a difficult project)…you’d probably be using a handful of technologies / languages…

linux
apache
php
sql
html
css
javascript
cron
bash scripts

to say the least…quite possibly more. my point is just that as a technical executive you need to learn what everything does/and is capable of doing when, rather then specific knowledge of every language. ie the ’spaces they fill’

I highly recommend CakePHP because the tutorials are easy to follow (even a monkey could do it) and whatever function you need chances are someone has already done it and blogged about it so all you have to do is follow along.

Have fun

Which Language? My suggestion is Ruby or Python. I have coded in C, C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Fortran, Cobol, Scheme, BASIC, and Lisp. I find those two languages very easy to read code and understand what is going on.

Now, you can write clean code in any language, its just those two languages are set up to in ways that encourage it.

PHP is hands down the volume winner in terms of total lines of code for internet marketing, so it would be my second choice.

In terms of what to read, I find any of the O’Reily books helpful. Start with a nutshell book, a cookbook, and if they have it algorithms (you will see what I mean as you puruse the O’reily titles)

These will get you started on your way to being a good hack / coder. If you ever want to make the jump to full software developer, then there are other issues to consider - like understanding data structures, user interface, etc.

Just get out their and write some code!

As far as the HTML and CSS is concerned, I would work on languages first. After that HTML is a breeze.