I don't know if this is deemed ripping or not, but I learned the basics by tweaking other ppls scripts and just seeing what they did & how they could be manipulated. Eventually I tried my own basic scripts and went from there. I still quite often have to ask for help or advice since the concept of scripting or computer language is very new to me and I sometimes need a little help to get me thinking in the right way.
lol I still remember the first guy that introduced me to mIRC. He showed me how to add a popup in the channel window (it was Hop:hop). I was so excited and was hooked after that!!!