throw02082011

With posts today on the youth employment crisis and "why you need a startup" I want to know what I should focus on. In high school and college I did a good bit of HTML on my own. I took C++ classes and decked out my TI-83 with calculator BASIC. I was 1 class short of a CS Minor. Not a complete noob at least.

I've played around with iPhone programming and Eclipse for Android but haven't gone full-bore. What I really want to know is if I have a few ideas, what do I need to realize them?

Say I wanted to make an Instagram clone (I don't). I'd need to know the App OS language and then MySQL or another database for the app to access? Plus a web interface of some kind to also interface with the database. And I feel like PHP or Ruby come into play.

I want to learn and have some background to build on but don't have any idea what it is I need to learn to actually go through the process.