vorbby

I'm a non-technical guy who has launched a successful site with a coder-friend, and we sold it for decent money (as far as two teenagers are concerned).

I'm now looking to code. I went out and bought Learning Python by Mark Lutz, and have done a bit of Learning Python The Hard Way.

As experienced coders, do you guys recommend reading the big tomes of knowledge, or using the smaller guides and using the saved time to write more code?

One thing to note is that I have pretty good patience and am willing to work through 1000+ page books. I'd also love to have a VERY solid background in the languages I learn, and not just "enough to get things done".

Are there any recent examples in the consumer tech space that have, or are, building themselves up with the goal of being a profitable company and remaining majority owned by the founders?

I'd really like to start a company and pay my bills with it and eventually make good money, not get rich quick.

Myself and two partners are beginning work on a new project, but we've hit our first obstacle early on; what language/framework are we doing it in? I am strongly leaning towards PHP, one is strongly pushing for ASP.net, and one is impartial.

Does anyone have any ideas why using ASP instead of an open source technology like PHP would be a good and/or bad options? All developers on the team have experience with PHP and ASP.net.