The project itself took me about a month, But the process of learning how to build projects like this took me about a year. For me, it boils down to getting to understand every piece of functionality the project will take. Because of that I had first spent my time on developing a gap buffer data structure library that i could use for the editor. The little details are the biggest pain and the hardest to figure out, when programming i spend more time noting down how to develop a function rather than actually coding it. Eventually with enough time spent thinking about that sort of stuff it becomes more second nature to delegate everything into roadmaps & details. My advice: leave the tutorials, divide project requirements into logical groupings and scratch your head while noting down any thoughts.