5250 programmer to web programmer

This is not a thread about screen scraping.
This is not a thread on moving applications from 5250 to the web.

This is a thread to explore the questions of a 30+ year 5250 programmer
who wants to convince his boss to let him tackle web programming even
though the company has a web programming staff already and I have no
real world web experience.

Let me get it out of the way: my boss wants to screen scrape. He gets
to keep all of his RPG/5250 experts at 100% utilisation and he gets 'web
apps' in a short amount of time. I want to write web apps from scratch
rather than grey-screen our 5250 panels and call it 'web' because the
display device changed.

The inspiration for this post came from a Twitter conversation. I
mention that to note specifically that I'm not afraid of the web nor
modern web apps. I use Scott's socket wrapper API to send tweets from
an IBM i command line. With RPG programs, ha! I have Zend Server
running on my i (I'm testing WikiMedia, the PHP software that runs
Wikipedia) as well as an older install of Perl 5.8.7 (I'm keeping
internal documentation on TWiki, Perl software that does a darned good
job with corporate wikis IMO). All on our i. But these are no
substitute for a portfolio of web sites the boss can look at.

I always thought of the problem of web experience as a bootstrapping
issue. How do I get web experience if the business specifically gives
web experience to the web team? But my conversation with people whose
opinions I implicitly trust inexorably lead me to wonder if I'd done
enough to help myself. The idea is that you start with an open source
project on GitHub or SourceForge, add to it a little until you get
experience in the Ways Of The Web. Maybe start your own project.

I did look some time ago. But the state of most projects is such that
I'm not experienced enough with the language to be able to contribute.
That is, the mindset between my modal brain and the modeless web is too
great to bridge at the same time I'm learning a new language.

So. How did you do it? Did anyone do it? Go from a matching
record-comfy 5250 RPG programmer to AJAX-comfy web programmer by setting
up a home web site? What app did you use to get going and most
importantly, why?

I'm not afraid to learn. But at the same time, I've done HelloWorld in
like a dozen web languages and it hasn't really enabled me to be a
productive web programmer. There must be some middle ground, some
semi-guided trail that will help me move myself closer to the goal. And
the way I figure it, if there is such a path, someone here on this list
has walked it. I don't want to be carried, but I'd like a peek at a
couple of your post cards!
--buck