Drupal pre-reqs: What you need to know before you start learning Drupal

My business depends on training students and beginners on Drupal, and within weeks turning them into productive Drupal developers. Over the years, I have gone through this process dozens of times, and have identified the key skills that make the difference between success and failure in learning Drupal.

The topics will include:

• Motivation: Why you should learn Drupal?
• Philosophical background: How to think like a developer?
• What to expect as a Drupal developer, themer or site-builder?
• How to be productive in Linux: command line, editors, grep/find, etc.
• SSH: ssh-keys, scp/sftp, rsync, port forwarding/tunneling
• HTML, CSS, LESS/SASS
• JavaScript: jQuery
• Development Tools: Chrome, NetBeans, HeidiSQL, Git
• Next steps: Where to start learning Drupal development.

You can see the presentation slides and other resources here.