I don't know what it takes to write (or wire up) a smart contracts language, but when I, as someone past beginner level, looked up the Cardano docs on how to build contracts I was mega confused and had no clear way how to get started.

Cardano contracts are _strange_, because they don’t describe what you want to happen, they check if what’s happening in a transaction is allowed — all contracts are a function `Transaction -> Bool` — and most people want to describe the actions. There are plenty of ways to write Cardano contracts in several languages, but I do agree it’s not clear how you go from idea to on chain.