Hmmm, thats a pretty big question. Well your first question is 2 parts so here goes:

1a. Regardless of what you use to program a game (C++, VB, C#, etc) you need a STRONG understanding in math. (Linear Algebra for example) Rendering a sprite to the screen and being able to control it through keyboard input is easy, getting it to react to hitting an object, that becomes difficult. (Read: Physics engine) For video games I prefer the XNA framework (Wrox publishes a book on this framework: Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows) Purists will say it's not "real" programming because it works on a higher level then a game wrote in C++ others will argue that you don't need such a low level understanding of everything to write a video game. For me, it is exponentially eaiser for me to dev a game in XNA because I have a deep understanding of C#, what you choose to do is a matter of preferance.

1b. It goes without saying that programming a website is nothing like programming a video game but I need to counter your question with a question: How do you want to program websites? There are many server side languages out there: ASP.NET, PHP, PERL, RUBY, Cold Fusion, etc. ASP.NET and PHP are, IMHO, the 2 most widley used Server Side languages in regards to website development. I recommend ASP.NET but I am a MS guy to the bone so my advice is a bit skewed.

2. This isnt really a question I can answer; you are either artistically inclined or you are not, you just have an "eye" for things. (I am a developer and couldnt create an "amazing" image in photoshop to save my life)

3. There is much more to designing software then reading and writing code, that is almost an after thought but yes, in a nutshell, this is what an engineer does. There are many more dimensions to it though: writing software that does things the most effecient way possible, knowing when you could get away using an integer as opposed to a double (hence saving memory consumption), etc. There are entire books wrote on this topic but that is it in a nutshell.

What does Maya have to do with software engineering? It is an amazing 3D animator but it really doesn't have anything to do with designing software.

JavaScript won't do you any good without and understanding of (X)HTML, but its a great language to know once you start working with websites. My suggestion would be to work from the ground up, pick up some XHTML books, understand how things get built from the ground up.

Let me know if you would like me to ellaborate on anything further!

hth.

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