Good post. The fact of the matter is that, these days, learning to code well enough to make a web site/app is not hard, it just takes time and determination. I've gone through a similar process - my motto has been "learn as much useful stuff as possible" e.g. Rails, Ajax, jquery, image editing, design principles, wireframes, mockups, git, sass, haml, mobile frameworks... Have a good idea AND be useful from day 1. That should be the goal. It's what I'm working toward, anyways.