How to become a better programmer?
tsally: It's important to differentiate between the technical ability to build web applications and the craft of programming.  It seems you are interested in the former, in which case I would recommend learning a popular framework (Ruby on Rails or Django).  While you are learning a framework you'll pick up the base language just fine.If you'd like to learn the more general craft of programming, Peter Norvig has some excellent advice: http://norvig.com/21-days.html.  You'll find some language recommendations in the appendix.