Rather than jumping on learning a tool, I'd advise you to write down what you think you'll need for the program you're creating. Something like this:
- I need to keep track of data here and there. It has to be stored somewhere and read when I open the program.
- I'll need a way to pass commands into the program. Either a GUI or cli. If the latter, I will need a parser.
- The program will run on my computer and not on a server. OR the program will run on a server and I'll connect to it for usage. OR I will write both a server and a client.
You get the gist. Now, for starters, you can go read the sticky that covers programming, or do this: PHP and Python are both easy languages for you to start with. I'm much more fond of Python than I am of PHP, so I'd tell you to go with that.
If you need a database, get used to the concept and look for libraries on the programming language you chose(or even create your own). There's sqlite, there's ConfigParser/configparser(for ini's, not really databases, but they work), etc.
If you need a GUI, look up how to make simple GUIs with available libraries on your programming language of choice. For cli: get familiar with strings and start writing your parser.
You can host a database and a program on a remote server and use a web server to handle requests. If this is all you're going to do, I recommend lighttpd, as it is much lighter than Apache and nginx. Learn to configure it for usage with Python(or PHP, up to you), then:
- Write the script that will take care of requests.
- Make sure to write to stdin/echo/print out the page itself, as that's what's going to be sent to the client: that'll be your GUI. Sounds easier than learning how to use a library, right?
- Write or configure a database that your script will access, if you need to.
- Finally, if PHP: do your best to prevent XSS attacks. (The cause of XSS vulnerabilities is one of the reasons to hate PHP and call it disgusting.)
