Since I am coming from a long background of embedded programming, I guess my starting point is different. But, since my last company loved hiring bright colleg

Since I am coming from a long background of embedded programming, I guess my starting point is different. But, since my last company loved hiring bright college kids with 0 experience (and I was usually in charge of training them), I have to say. Work with someone experienced. You can re-invent the wheel a thousand times, but you will get much better if you learn from someone else. And until you do that, I have found a few blogs/videos that show how professional developers write a simple site, start to finish. Since they annotate the process, you really get to understand not just the how but also the why. So IMHO best:internships second:the blogs above third: programming yourself (and if you ever decide to switch to embedded programming and move to Israel, I can hook you up ;)