How do I learn theming?

OK, at the risk of incurring the wrath of EVERY mod, I just want to ask this really n00b ish question because I feel a little bit lost. How I do start learning to make my own theme? Yes, I know I need to gitgud at LUA but I haven't really found a good way to do that nor have I found much in terms of which LUA commands do what for SM. Most of the guides I've found launch right into the deep end of code jargon or don't do much beyond introducing you to some of the most basic concepts but not really how to implement them. I'm sure this gets asked every 5 seconds, so I apologize if anyone finds this annoying, but I'd like to make a theme and I just have no clue where to start. Copying bits of other people's themes to see what they did isn't working for me because I have no idea what I'm even poking around with. Can anyone show me a good place to start?

While I currently have source amnesia, prior research leads me to believe that you would best ask people directly involved in Stepmania's ongoing development. I don't know any particulars, but this wiki might help.

I'd start with learning Lua in some other environment. If you play another game that can be scripted with Lua, try doing stuff in that game first. There's also LOVE, which is a relatively easy-to-use game engine that is programmed in Lua. StepMania is pretty poorly documented, and dbk2's Lua for SM5 has some things in it. It also links to the SM5 Lua API, which lists pretty much every built-in function that is available. Most have a little bit of terse documentation, but some don't.

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