This is how I learned programming. The first program I was proud of was an AOL Punter, which would flood people w/ malformed font codes to disconnect them from the service. Oh, to be a script kiddie.
First application was a customer satisfaction survey (with graphs!) for some company in Canada while in High School. The book I learned from was http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-4th/dp/0672329166/
I wrote a simple CMS for a startup in South Carolina in ruby. The (lack of) documentation of rails bit me in the ass, so I didn't get terribly far. It still reads well enough to a python eye.
