Where to begin programming-Games for Facebook?

[Ormond Vostashi]

I was a game developer in the DOS era, but changed careers and am now interested in moving back to what I love.
Because I do not have the resources, nor time, to try to get back into stand-alone retail game creation, I am very interested in web-game development, particularly for platforms like Facebook - where I can allow multiple users to interract to some degree (text messages in-game at the least)

The first question is obviously, what language(s) to begin with? I know there is a wide selection.. Flash, Java, Javascript, Actionscript, PHP, MySQL.. I know any reasonable game will require some of more than one, but to try to learn them all would have me reaching the end of old age without ever creating anything.

If you know any MUST HAVE books for the subject that would be a great help.

[Astano]

You would need to learn Flash (Action Script), PHP and mySQL at the least to build a facebook game, the other thing you need to learn is the facebook API which isn't a greatly documented work so this is going to be the hardest part. You can learn the other language via the web using online guides and such. http://www.flashkit.com/ are good online sources