Yep, it is. Actually, I was planning on not watching it due to not liking... SHAFT, but I stuck through the art design, and just really enjoyed it in the end. Although, I am a bit behind right now, as I have yet to watch Hana or Tsuki.
Yes, its very good. I'm currently reading ~30 manga right now, and its easily my favorite. I will admit the most recent arc is slower, however, it was rather short, and seems to be wrapping up soon.
Glad you approve.
Good luck! I would definitely suggest learning an object oriented programming language next then. As it seems you are fairly strong in web programming so far. Java is probably the easiest since it handles things more efficiently than most, however, C++ is a great place to start as well. And the thing about learning an object oriented language is that your code can pretty much transfer to any other object oriented language, just keeping in mind different syntax, etc. Or if you just want to stick with web development, Ruby and Python are good ones to learn as well.