has a pretty good web dev course. Not sure what kind of jobs are around you but i'm sure a number of them are web dev. Personally I think python would be a good first language on top of that, but if you think the market likes php and java, I'd pick java out of those two (I like C# better than java but I learned it because that's what is popular where I am)
Man, I wish this is how my last place did it. Instead, if we were getting through 12 we'd commit to 14 and then the dev manager would wonder why stuff wasn't getting done.
Once people start developing bots for a game it has pretty much reached this point. While usually not kosher, in some games I think developing a bot for them would be more interesting than the game itself
Sorry for the late reply, Just noticed your comment. I don't know a way to do it in node. If you have setup devise a few times recently you could possibly get it done with ROR + the devise gem + scaffolding. This is a pretty terrible interview question though, as testing if someone has practiced a canned solution ( which is really all you could do in that time) doesn't seem that great, and actually taking the time to make your own solution would take much longer and an 8 hour unpaid interview question also seems bad </rambling>.
And you had to do that from scratch? No libraries allowed? That does seem rough. With libraries allowed you could probably spin something up with rails + scaffolding + devise though.
Heck, at this point, what developer who hadn't worked on mainframes before would decide to go into mainframe development?