[wowtip]

Not an answer to your specific questions, but my recommendation i always

1. Learn as much elisp as you can

2. Learn the help system

3. https://emacs.stackexchange.com

4. Bind eval-region to easy to reach key for testing and troubleshooting

Emacs is a what I would call an extreme case of a positive feedback loop application, the more effort and time you put in learning it, the more you get back. This is of course true for almost any application, but with Emacs being a complete text manipulation system more effort is required.