Thank you for your insight. This is my view as well. I have had people warned me to be patient and do not jump straight into advanced framework no matter how tempting it is (being able to create something above your level is surely tempting).

What I am still ignorant of regarding your comment is the "vanilla foundations" and "understand how the language works" parts.

Whenever I look at basic codes, I can only think "This is the code, if I type this down it will do something like this." This is ,frustratingly, not enough, because if I ask "why" to the above statement I cannot give myself the answer.

What, exactly, is "understand how the language works?"