Advice on learning Java: Pick up a copy of Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. I can't recommend it strongly enough. It's a thin book and will be the best Java book you will ever read. I wish he would do some sequals to that.

They all give you different ways of thinking about the problem you're trying to solve. My personal favorite is Java. If I could do 100% of everything in Java that would be great. Unfortunately I also have to use C sometimes. C will never have the safety and reliability of Java. PHP is great for doing quick small applications. Everyone who does web stuff should know a little bit of PHP. If you just want to bang out a page that says something like "The current time is: __:__ am" there's nothing quicker and easier than PHP. The other good thing about PHP is that it's trivial to get it up and running on a web server these days, whereas getting a Java/JSP/Tomcat environment up and running and serving pages can be quite a nightmare for someone who doesn't have some experience in doing it. There are too many configuration options. Everything in the Java world has a steep learning curve, but once you get it, you can do some amazing things with it.

Keep on learning. Every language gives you a new way to look at the problem.

Flashcards for memorization, vocabulary