The best thing to do is...not to start any games or aspirations if you just got it and are not good at programming(like me :p)
Hmmmm, I think the coolest tutorial I've read so far is Xeno's rpg tutorial, it's in a sticky post somewhere
If you read that, you'll get a very good grasp for most things. Also, read TDK_Man's tutorials, they cover pretty much ALL of the basics, in depth and accurately
Pretty much, if you understand the tutorials, the manual will just build onto them with new commands.
The text editor is nothing more than you said it is, really :p
Just type your code here, when you read all the tutorials you'll have a grasp of it.
Gl, fellow noob ^^