ok, i admit i'm not in the programming industry any more but are you sure you want to be learning v2? i had to regex my way through all of my scripts to go from v2 to v3 about a year ago. not much fun. if i was pointing anyone in the direction of a starting point, i'd say v3 all the way.
however if there are jobs aplenty for v2 and that's your reasoning, fair enough.