Decisions, Decisions... and Recipes

Well, the Amigo has version 0.8 of his Nailtini inventory and order tracking program up and running. Quite a few features.  Not very many known bugs.  Certainly ready for the clients to try it out and provide feedback.  Angel is one such client, and she is already giving me input on how to make the program more useful.

This seems like a good time to study some more programming technology.  The Nailtini program uses: PHP, MySQL, html, css, and a little JavaScript.  It's been a fun experience and a great learning experience.  The question is: what's the next thing to learn?  What would give me the best ROI?  

I spent a few hours reading up on Java.  Not JavaScript, but Java.  The Amigo had an interview a while back w/ a manager at Amazon.com.  The developers there -- or at least those in that manager's group -- use Java under Linux.  Some of the best programmers (and smartest guys) I've ever met have been Java programmers.

OTOH, there's Python.  It's much more modern than Java, but it's not falling-off-the-leading-edge-modern.  Python's momentum is definitely on the upswing.  It's certainly easier to learn than Java.

Finally, I found a pretty nice website devoted to Python.  The author of that site recommends that if you want to be a Python programmer, you should also know (you guessed it): PHP, MySQL (or equivalent), html, css, and JavaScript.  Well, shucks.

Do any of you -- Subscribers to the Wrong Rock -- have suggestions?  Do any of you think it would be a Bad Idea or a Waste of Time to focus on Python learning for a few weeks?

The other thing that's going on today is an attempt at creating a recipe.  This is the 2nd try.  The Venerable Friendly One would like to have a reliable recipe for dark chocolate fudge that's made with honey (instead of white sugar) and with some combination of peanut butter and almond butter (instead of dairy butter).  

The first iteration resulted in scorched chocolate sauce.  Since it was chocolate, it was still good (sort of).  The recipe from which I started indicated that you shouldn't stir the fudge after it started to boil and that you should use a candy thermometer.  Thus, the mixture scorched before ever reaching the "soft ball stage".  

At about 50 minutes of simmering, with occasional stirring to prevent stickage, the fudge mixture was clearly at the "thread stage".  Barring other data, it shall be declared Cooked at approximately one hour of simmering.

This time, the Amigo will use an electric mixer to beat the fudge into submission. Hopefully that will address the lack of thickenage.

Stay tuned on this one.