OKAY, so here's what's going on. Every now and then my muse lets me know that I haven't done anything particularly creative or productive lately and starts bitching about whatever it was she was bitching about last time we had that conversation. Anyway, the point is recently I've been feeling like doing something productive, which in my case traditionally means web design. Last time I did this I focused on style. This time around, I've been looking into expanding my repitoire and adding functionality. That's where programming comes in.
So... I guess what I'm looking for is some advice. There's a lot of languages out there that do a lot of things, and while it's not hard to find resources on how to learn to code, it's a bit harder for the uninitiated to figure out what exactly the scope of all this code is. We got Perl, Python, JavaScript, PHP, SQL... but what does it all do? I mean, I've heard people argue about the form, structure, efficiency, and even eloquence of proramming languages, but it seems all these people take for granted that anyone listening already knows the scope of whatever language they're defending.
So........ any recommendations/advice/resources/whatever? And why do people have such a distaste for JavaScript? It seems to be the language best suited for client-side interactivity. Hell, web browsers have support built right in. <p><div style="text-align:center"></div></p>