Tools for web application development

One of my goals has been to build a web application that provides something of value to people. Given my non-programming background, I have had to learn about things the hard way especially in such a fast developing environment where the tool in vogue yesterday is a non-player today. So I have been learning and gathering information about the key technologies in this space - Ruby on Rails, Python with Django and Perl with Catalyst.What is interesting to note is that most of them are built on the philosophy of the MVC (Model View Controller) pattern and pretty much do the same for a novice developer. I am sure as I dig deeper, there will be nuances that each of them have that set them apart from the rest. But as I skim through these technologies, the motivation, architecture and some of the ways they are implemented are very similar.I found this link useful to take my baby steps on the project: http://www.bestwebframeworks.com/I have not had a chance to explore the Java friendly frameworks namely Struts, Hibernate and Spring. I hope to take a look at them in the near future. Given the very limited amount of time I have to spare on the matter and the very large set of tools available to do the job, it is proving to be a good learning experience that is yet to translate into actual action.