I can't see why there would be a consensus best answer for this. People enjoy different things and are better at different things. If you want to get your frien

I can't see why there would be a consensus best answer for this. People enjoy different things and are better at different things. If you want to get your friend into web development, I'd advise having him work through one of those complete tutorials where you write a bit both sides of a site, and see what he enjoys more. I know there are different languages for back end but I think any good tutorial should do, as the problems you solve on the backend I think are pretty consistent over the different languages. Some people really like working front-end and doing all types of things to make a page load quickly in all browsers/look good or whatever, and some people like working on the back end and getting it up to 10kqps ro something. I like back end but that's just my personal taste. Let your friend be good at what he's good at, I think the job market wanting both skills right now if that's the reason your friend is trying to learn web development. And don't forget the whole world of non-web programming :)