OK, since I've been monkeying around with other stuff, I was wondering if this was possible:

Would like to create a pool with:

- Multiple users with
- "Secure" (i.e., Password-protected) access, who can
- Pick each playoff game and
- Pick a relative "confidence" weight

I envision either a screen listing all four matchups each week with radio buttons, or perhaps four drop down boxes (one for each game).

The "confidence" weight, essentially, is one game is weighted four points, one three, one two, and one one point. User chooses the weight. Each weight can only (and must be) used once each week.

Once a game starts, a player can't change his pick. (So note there are four different start times. And when I say "start", I don't need to integrate with the NFL's official clock - although that would be totally cool - but if the game is scheduled to start at 1PM, that game's option on the website should "lock" at 1PM.)

So, that's what I'd LIKE to do!

I don't know anything about nothing, but I have some free time and I can be clever with an army knife and WD-40. What "Dummies" book should I pick up? Am I looking at PERL, JAVA, HTML5, C+++++++, ETC.?

I know I'm off my gourd, but where should I even begin to start?Since most of this can be done asynchronously I'd start with a web-based interface.  (Web applications are generally more transactional than stateful.  No, I don't know what that means either.)

If you know any PHP, you're well on the way.  If not, it's not too difficult to pick up if you already have some programming experience.  The biggest hurdle people tend to hit is understanding where is the data and figuring out how to pass server-side (PHP) data to the client (javascript) and vice versa.

Add to that a database (MYSQL being the common choice) and you're 90% there.  Using a PHP framework (CodeIgniter is my favourite, but there are many others) makes a lot of the work much easier and helps you to MAINTAIN better programming discipline.

Using FuelCMS (which is CodeIgniter plus a lot of CMS functions) you'll find that most of the hard work (content management, authentication, etc) has been done.  You then only need to think about the facets of your application that are unique.

There are of course many different ways of skinning this cat.  You could create an application in Visual Studio/C# for example.  The great ADVANTAGE of web applications is that usually users don't need to install any software, to access it.  They just need a web browser.PS  Your application will be harder to create than you think.  Quote from: Rob Pomeroy on December 22, 2011, 01:57:23 AM

PS  Your application will be harder to create than you think. 

No it won't!
...(I'm thinking it will be very hard)