Oh, kinda like how I learned Emacs: use it "wrong" for years, treating it as a sort of weird archaic Notepad++, then gradually discover features, master the keybindings, and learn to program Emacs Lisp over time until my proficiency, and the utility the editor provided to me, grew.

these days i'm seriously considering switching to zed tho

That sounds like a horrible way of learning Emacs, but fair enough. I don't think you need to know elisp as a prerequisite but personally I learnt enough of it to be able to get by without Customize.

You might want to read Zed's EULA.