Hello everyone,

I have an open request to any seasoned instructors or gurus out there.
I have looked at courses around town, however I am small business
owner with zero extra time to lock in specific times to attend a class.

I also am not really interested in a 'wholistic learn everything I
need to know class' or earning a certificate. I need very specific
skills, yesterday!

Do any of you do tutoring or one on one training?

Specifically I am developing applications for our company using:
IDE: Codecharge Studio
Lang: PHP
DB: Firebird
OS: Redhat9
WebS: Apache

All of my experience is in writing formulas and calculation in Excel.
Straight boolean type stuff. I also write Bash scripts once in a
while. But no other programming experience.

I am hitting a point where I need to go beyond the standard toolset
provided by Codecharge and customize some of its functions; using PHP
and SQL.

I learn very well from picking apart and analysing existing code, but
first I have to be able to read the language.

I am looking for a crash course in:
Basic programming: what are functions, classes, methods,
PHP: what is its syntax, how to make it sing,
SQL: I can write basic statements, but could use some brushing up.

Instructor: I would like to be able to ask a lot of questions as they
come up, and be given resources and exercises specifically geared to
leading me down the right path to knowledge so to speak. Can you also
share insight about ways of building these applications that might be
better suited to my business.

Me: I would be responsible for busting my butt with the exercises.
And asking a lot questions. Provide remote meetings /conference calls
etc.

If I was logical about this I would just hire a web development
company to build the applications. And I would stick with what I
know, building and running a company.

Except that:

1. I already had a fulltime programmer on staff who was an exercise
for me in results management and project management, specifically
finishing them. That ended when I realized it was costing me way too
much to have a non-core-skillset employee working fulltime and me not
really seeing any tangible results.

2. I really enjoy learning new things, and love programming and
problem solving. So ultimately I am probably choosing the path of
less profit and greater learning. At some point I will step back and
let a pro go in and tweak everything, but for now I would like to learn.

Enough rambling. Could you please forward this to the most
appropriate person if I did not?

Thank you,

David