If you're wanting some more information on making Litecoin clones these tutorials might be of use to you
https://www.youtube.com/user/whatthefluxable. But I'm more trying to build it from scratch to try and understand it as much as I can, not just make a clone of an existing coin.
I do feel like there isn't enough information out there to help developers get over the initial hurdle for starting blockchain development. Or at least it's not all easily accessible.
Feel free to message me if you get much further with this. I'd like to get in contact with some other new developers and maybe share what resources they're using.
Yes, my motivation for creating a coin is to step through the details of how Bitcoin is implemented, and find the main differences between Bitcoin and other coins. I don't see the point in creating a coin other than to learn about the implementation details of Bitcoin and the bigger alt-coins.
There isn't really enough information out there. Even Hal Finney had quite a few questions for Satoshi on the implementation details. So nobody should feel bad - if Hal Finney was puzzled at first, we're all in good company.
It's just that Satoshi did things in a different way; he/she/they tried to implement a system that solved some problems and even appeared to predict the future to a certain extent. Once Satoshi was satisfied these main problems were solved in the software, Satoshi sent some emails then put the paper out there.
The software is quirky and full of bizarre details like mixing little and big endian integers, var ints when the version header might have sufficed, the use of a certain elliptic curve for performance reasons then an apparent "fuck it..." There's a lot more, although that just ads to the fascination for some; for others they recognize that real software is full of trade-offs, hacks, legacy cruft and compromises.
I'm still working on building my way up from earlier reference implementations, as well as Googling for all the rest. I have 0.2.0, the first version that supported Linux (Ubuntu to be more precise) and compiling and stepping through it. I've also changed the genesis block a couple of times and tried mining. I still have a fair way to go I think. The breadth of knowledge and experience needed to understand Bitcoin is astonishing. I'm sticking to technical details. One could spend a life time studying computer science, cryptography, economics, law, government, the history of money, finance, etc., and still not achieve the astonishing level of insight that Satoshi and others possessed.
We should definitely collaborate to try and achieve a satisfactory understanding and invite others on board, whatever their experience or expertise.