Creating Modifications

[Sarteck]

Dear vBulletin users and Pre-Sales people,

I help to administrate a vBulletin forum, but do not own it myself. I would like to start writing mods to the forum, but I'm not yet quite clear on this "hooks" system, even after spending a few hours reading the docs at vbulletin.com. What I mean is that I don't understand what hooks do what function and require what input.

Sometime in the near future, I may be buying a vB license, so that I can use vB at the site I actually get paid for working on. XD However, I would like to know a little bit more about the ins and outs of it before making that kind of decision.

I've already tried re-inventing the wheel--after a month of coding, I only have a very basic forum coded. While I could feasibly still use this forum system I created, it just seems so much more easier to use something someone else has already made, something with tons more features. >.< Normally I'd kick myself for wanting to use code that I myself haven't written...

EDIT: Oh, yes, the point in my rambling! I just want to know, just how easy has it been for you guys to come to fully understand the hooks system and the vB coding in general?