Ask HN: Do "idea guys" willing to learn to program have critical paths to demos?

I have "an idea" and I'd like to learn enough programming to implement it myself. For various reasons I figure I have 2 years or so to run a flag up the flagpole and see who salutes it before "the big guys" roll into the territory. So I figure I have 1 year to devote to learning to program and 1 year of "misc." including going live, getting feedback, tweeking, etc.

My quesiton, for anybody that cares to answer: Knowing what you know now, what path would you take to implement the following, keeping in mind I'm starting from scratch and am just trying to build a demo, not become a professional:

A site where: - Users setup an account - Users can email/invite friends - Accounts have a variable, let's say "experience points ala WoW" - Said variable can increase/decrease actively based on pre-outlined user behaviors - Said variable can increase/decrease automatically based on administrator rules - Users can "gift" said variables to each other (exchange)

On a scale of 1-5, 5 being highest: - Uptime: 5 - Security: 3 - Scalability: 4

The reason I ask this is my own attempts at self-education are very slowly getting me to understand things that have very little to do with what I want to put together.

I don't even know exactly what I should be studying and trying to ask what few programmers I know only leaves me even more confused as there seems to be very little agreement on anything, especially how exactly I should start.

Am I just pipe-dreaming, or is there a way to focus in on the toolbag I need to build this project? And if so, what should the toolbag look like?

Any suggestions/books you started with/books you would recommend to someone starting out/online course etc. would be very much appreciated.

Thanks to anybody who cares to respond.