Beginning before the beginning: the basics of the building blocks?

Hi KM Community,
I’ve been watching videos and trying to create my own macros but come up against deeper ignorance than getting to know this program. How do I know when a variable is called for vs something else? How do I know what the capabilities of each action and type of action are? Of course I should experiment, but my starting point is so basic that the outcome of the experiments is that whatever I try doesn’t work. Point taken but with so many possibilities, it’s hard to know how to be systematic in a way that I learn from my mistakes.

So can anyone recommend a starting point for understanding the building blocks themsrlves and what order they need to be entered so that they work?

Just FYI, I can’t use the record feature because I rely on a zoomed screen, which means I’m panning around for where I need to do something after hitting record, which of course means searching is captured too! But really I just want to understand the basics of the language at the root of KM so I can get to the basics of knowing trial and error.

Hopefully this question is so “dumb” that it isn’t!

THANK YOU!