Hi, here's my experience with getting started with PHP/MySQL

Back in 1999 (beginning of the dot-com boom) I worked as a UNIX tech support guy on phones for a webhosting company (back then called WebHosting.Com) - eventually I insisted on being moved to the programming department and was given a nice trial by fire: boss walks in one day and asks if I heard of PHP before - I said no. So he takes a 60 page print-out of the customer control panel we were using (which was mostly broken) and says "you have 2 weeks to bring it up to par" - and he left ....

The fun part was trying to decipher german comments in the code (the CP was written by a german exchange student the summer before)

Anyway, I think it all starts with hands-on-coding. First you learn how to make things just work - you don't care about how they work, you just want to make sure they work. This part takes about 1-2 months if you do it every day.

The next part, writing / designing code that looks like art ... that part takes years

Enjoy!

Mike