Kick start my career !

Hello I have been a QA Eng. for a while and I would like to move
into programming/datbase development. I have read many news and
articles about the different development tools available. I am also
starting my Masters in Computer science this fall 2011. While I do
my masters I would like to start familiarizing with atleast 1 or 2
languages so that I can get break in my career instead of waiting
three years for my masters to complete

This is my learning plan and let me know if this makes sense:

1. First get an understanding of HTML5/DHTML and CSS
2. Second learn a scripting language for e.g. Javascript
3. Third learn PHP/MYSQL which will atleast give me an understanding
of the RDBMS and get exposure to SQL

I belive all this three would atleast get my foundations strong

My question is can anyone suggest me good books for each of the
three phases and/or does anyone have a better study plan that they
can suggest?

I have more questions but I would like to see what your responses are

-- Nabs ramon, July 7, 2011

Answers

Sorry for the terribly late answer. I would recommend that you think about what you're going to build rather than what languages and tools you will learn. The tools that you mention wanting to learn can be used to complete a project such as the online community construction set forth in http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/

Find projects to do and learn the tools that you need to do them.

-- Philip Greenspun, April 5, 2012