Yep, there aren't many jobs in the real world for PHP/MySQL developers and the jobs that are there are fiercely fought over :) PHP is a great language for starting out with but I'd reccomend learning C# or something more advanced that has lots of jobs around for.

Hey man I am in the same situation, they got me taking all sorts of stuff before I even get to learn any code, I'm looking at 2 years of boring work to before I even enter my first class in Java.

My advice it to start learning php/mySQL now, by the time you enter class you will have alot of experance with it and have a jump on everyone else. Otherwise stick with the boring stuff, I messed around when I first got in and have three withdraws (wasted money and time!) to show for it. Don't end up like me ;)

I will also go with what others have said, php/mySQL is nice, but learning C++/MS-SQL/Oracle/etc etc will take you much further.

You all say that, but i've seen five great jobs in industries like 3D Film Design for a web application developer for php/mysql.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I just bought three books; one called Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide (because I'm not too familiar with it), Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL, and Learning PHP5. :glasses: I've began reading them and so far everything makes sense to me. Lets hope everything else will..

Five... not thousands like you'll get with something like C#

What good will a job do if we hate doing it? Money isn't everything. Every one of us want to get home to our girl and tell her about your great day, not sink down on the couch with a cold one and say "what a goddamn, [insert array of cuss words] day, argh!" ;)
And yeah I can see the similiarities between C and PHP, but considering their area of use is quite different, I still consider the 2 different enough to warrant me posting the starting paragraph :)
Plus a great vB coder and/or vB designer can reel in a fair amount of money ;)

Statistically speaking, knowledge of PHP and MySQL is useless against enterprise-level languages and databases. The only primary reason that vB uses it is because the majority of web servers had that. However, large companies run their own servers and can put whatever engines they want on there, which is something scalable like JSP or ASP. PHP is a fine language for simple tasks but it's horrible for large-scale, scalable projects.

Yeah I don't really care that much about money, the only reason I care somewhat about it is because (yeah I know it's kind of stupid) I want to show my parents that all the time I spend on the computer is because I am trying to better my future, and by pulling in a pretty good income, they'll be able to see that. But also I want to be able to support my family (if I have one) doing something I like to do.

[high]* Guest190829 adds C# on his thing to learn before college list...[/high]

It's not stupid, as it's EXACTLY what I want as well. My mom is always on my ass for spending too much time on the comp, and she calls it "gaming" despite my best efforts of persuading her Im coding to learn XD