Needs Advice on Project-level Stuff

Hello, /prog/

I have a syntactic understanding of C/C++, I'm not bad with Java and I can write PHP fairly well, script-for-script.

I have absolutely no capacity for doing a _project_, though. I really just sit down with no real clue where to begin. Thus, all of my things fail miserably within the first week. I really never know where to start.

I'm reading SICP now, I've never come across it before, and /prog/ seems to treat it as required reading. Should be good.

My predominant issue with C/C++ is that GUIs are hard as fucking hell, as far as I can tell. That's what turns me to Java and PHP.

My current 'project' is a HTTP/HTTPS proxy script in PHP or J2EE (I play around in Oracle lots, and I figure that this may be a useful way to delve into Oracle as well).

I've drawn a few diagrams on my whiteboard about what exactly the program should do, what needs it satisfies and just the general feel of it.

Where do I go from here? Is there a decent, no-crap book that I should look into? I think I have the coding skill to code each necessary function, but I really can't bring it all together.

Cheers /prog/

If you think GUIs in C/C++ are hard (what platform are you using? X? Win32?) you'll find the FORCED OBJECT ORIENTATION OF CODE in Java to be worse.

And GUIs in PHP? That makes no sense.