- Yes, you can be a freelance web programmer. I've been a freelance Software Engineer / Consultant for around a year now, specializing in Python. It's completely possible, but you're going to be competing against a lot of people. You need to find one technology and specialize in it. You also will need to have a good portfolio / resume. If you want to get into web design you should design some fake sites for your portfolio.

- Web development traditionally focuses around HTML / CSS / Javascript for static sites, so you should learn these first. Most clients want to have a database system of some sort, so you'll want to learn a backend language too. There are a lot of these. I use Python + Flask, but the most popular one is PHP. Once you can make great sites with these languages, you should be good to go.

- You're way off from actually getting jobs. This is a question you can ask in a year or two, once you've specialized in some fields and found out what you like.

Yes, I definitely see PHP being phased out very soon. In the computer science community, PHP is considered a very bad language. I think these are the best languages / frameworks for backend web development, personally:

• Ruby + Ruby on Rails
• Python + Flask / Django

If you go the Python route, learn Python and Flask first, then learn Django. You need to go through a lower-level framework (like Flask) to understand the "why" of Django. I've also heard good things about Pyramid. Python and Ruby are far better languages than PHP (for learning purposes), because you can do a variety of things with them (not just web development), and they have clearer syntax.

- Can I really be a web programmer that works from home and make a decent amount of money or am I just kidding myself?

Of course you can. Most Web developers are pretty bad based on my many, many years of experience in that field. You can easily be a Web developer and even make yourself into one of the best. Just put in the time and effort and passion.

And then hope you have good interpersonal skills because as a freelance developer you have to be able to sell yourself pretty well to make good money. And then hope you don't like work-life balance because being a work-at-home anything is the worst way to live.

(I used to be a work-at-home freelance Web developer.)

- If the first is true, what languages should I learn to get started?

Despite how much fun is made of it, PHP. It is by the far the most prevalent language on the Web, PHP jobs pay a ton, and honestly it works just fine for what it does. There's zero evidence that it's going to go away any time soon; quite the opposite.

A good programmer however knows a wide variety of languages and frameworks so you should have a wide base of experience of with PHP plus you could be familiar with C#/ASP, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, and so on. Learn at least one new language every year.

- What jobs about web design should I look for?

Ones you think you can do once you have some idea of what you can do.

Also keep in mind that "design" is not at all the same thing as "programming." They're two different jobs and any non-trivial non-crap project is going to require multiple people of both those disciplines (and others).

Despite how much fun is made of it, PHP. It is by the far the most prevalent language on the Web, PHP jobs pay a ton, and honestly it works just fine for what it does. There's zero evidence that it's going to go away any time soon; quite the opposite.

A good programmer however knows a wide variety of languages and frameworks so you should have a wide base of experience of with PHP plus you could be familiar with C#/ASP, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, and so on. Learn at least one new language every year.

Come on. First of all, just because a lot of people use PHP doesn't make it good. Second of all, PHP doesn't pay a ton! Seriously! Python / Ruby pays way more than PHP, PHP devs are a dime a dozen. PHP is a bad language:

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/

http://webonastick.com/php.html

I use C# and ASP.Net (which is basically HTML, and JavaScript) for my all of my web programming.

If you have a valid college email address you could go to https://www.dreamspark.com/ and download VS 2013 for free to play around with it.

You can also just use Visual Studio Express, if you're not a student.

Come on. First of all, just because a lot of people use PHP doesn't make it good.

Who cares? A language being good or not is an irrelevant nerdcore detail that businesses - the things that give you money in exchange for work - don't care about.

C++ is a terrible language and yet it's also the single hands-down best language to use for AAA game development. C# has all kinds of mistakes and nonsense in it that we're stuck with since it's the dominant general-purpose applications language (and the second most widely-used Web language). Python had to have an incompatible 3.0 release because of the mistakes made in older versions. Ruby has gone through several major upheavals. JavaScript is widely considered even worse than PHP and yet is unavoidable in Web development. Java is widely hated by many experienced Java programmers. Perl is considered super difficult to read even by its proponents and also had its own failed incompatible redesign in attempt to fix it. Shell script is so bad that practically every Linux programmer has written their own shell.

All languages suck and are terrible, all libraries and frameworks are terrible, all game engines are terrible, every Web application is terrible, every non-trivial project is chock-full of terrible code, and life goes on.

To quote Bjarne Stroustrup: "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

If you haven't realized this yet, you're too new to programming.

Second of all, PHP doesn't pay a ton! Seriously! Python / Ruby pays way more than PHP

A tiny bit of active research belies that. The languages all pay around the same. A PHP programmer will average around ~$95,000/year, roughly the same for Python or Ruby or C# or C++ or so on. An entry-level junior programmer will make less. An experienced senior developer will make more.

Said experienced Web developer will know PHP, Python, C#, C, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, shell script, how to set up and secure a LAMP server from scratch, and the average air speed of an unladen swallow. They'll be able to tell you why PHP sucks, why Python sucks, why C sucks, why Linux sucks, why databases sucks, why the Internet sucks, why vacuum cleaners suck, and then will go get the job done in whichever technology is used by the rest of the team without whining about it.

Since the OP is asking about how to get started, though, my answer remains: if you want to jump into the Web quickly, start with PHP and diversify your language knowledge after, but diversify it as much as you possibly can as soon as you can.

Come on. First of all, just because a lot of people use PHP doesn't make it good.

Who cares? A language being good or not is an irrelevant nerdcore detail that businesses - the things that give you money in exchange for work - don't care about.

A lot of people care. I guess if you only care about money and delivering crappy code, then PHP is fine. But some of us, you know, like to have fun when programming.

C++ is a terrible language and yet it's also the single hands-down best language to use for AAA game development. C# has all kinds of mistakes and nonsense in it that we're stuck with since it's the dominant general-purpose applications language (and the second most widely-used Web language). Python had to have an incompatible 3.0 release because of the mistakes made in older versions. Ruby has gone through several major upheavals. JavaScript is widely considered even worse than PHP and yet is unavoidable in Web development. Java is widely hated by many experienced Java programmers. Perl is considered super difficult to read even by its proponents and also had its own failed incompatible redesign in attempt to fix it. Shell script is so bad that practically every Linux programmer has written their own shell.

Alright, let's debunk all this bullshit you just made up:

C++ is a terrible language and yet it's also the single hands-down best language to use for AAA game development.

Have you ever programmed in C++? You probably just wrote terrible code.

C# has all kinds of mistakes and nonsense in it that we're stuck with.

It probably does. All languages have some bad stuff, it's just that PHP has more bad stuff.

Python had to have an incompatible 3.0 release because of the mistakes made in older versions.

This is untrue. It's obvious you have no idea how the Python ecosystem works, or how programming language updates work in general.

Ruby has gone through several major upheavals.

If you think updates are bad, you're too new to programming . See what I did there?

Javascript is widely considered even worse than PHP and yet is unavoidable in Web development.

Sources, please? You just made this up.

Java is widely hated by many experienced Java programmers.

Yeah, whatever, keep up with the "I'm just going to make stuff up without sources to prove my point."

Perl is considered super difficult to read even by it's proponents and also had it's own failed incompatible redesign in attempt to fix it.

You should really stop saying stuff about language ecosystems which you just read on some blog without actually programming in that language.

Shell script is so bad that practically every Linux programmer has written their own shell.

Now this is just absurd.

All languages suck and are terrible, all libraries and frameworks are terrible, all game engines are terrible, every Web application is terrible, every non-trivial project is chock-full of terrible code, and life goes on.

But some stuff is more terrible than others.

A tiny bit of active research belies that. The languages all pay around the same. A PHP programmer will average around ~$95,000/year, roughly the same for Python or Ruby or C# or C++ or so on. An entry-level junior programmer will make less. An experienced senior developer will make more.

Said experienced Web developer will know PHP, Python, C#, C, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, shell script, how to set up and secure a LAMP server from scratch, and the average air speed of an unladen swallow. They'll be able to tell you why PHP sucks, why Python sucks, why C sucks, why Linux sucks, why databases sucks, why the Internet sucks, why vacuum cleaners suck, and then will go get the job done in whichever technology is used by the rest of the team without whining about it.

Since the OP is asking about how to get started, though, my answer remains: if you want to jump into the Web quickly, start with PHP and diversify your language knowledge after, but diversify it as much as you possibly can as soon as you can.

Seriously, right now you're just spouting off dribble to prove a nonexistent point. He wants to get started. PHP is a bad language to get started in. It teaches bad practices and has bad design (I actually cited sources for that, you didn't). Hey, I can quote Bjarne Stroustrup too!

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that [sic] have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. - Bjarne Stroustrup

Same thing with PHP. If you don't agree with that, you're too new to programming . See how your ad hominem attack breaks down?

I would say that it's harder to get started with PHP, because it's very non-intuitive and it's not a general-purpose language.