You already know some Rust and some general blockchain. What you're missing is the Solana-specific mental model, and that gap is exactly what makes Solana code look bizarre at first. The good news: almost everything in Solana descends from one idea. If you internalize that idea plus three primitives (accounts, PDAs, CPIs), every project in your course — voting, escrow, stablecoin, swap, prediction market — becomes a variation on patterns you already understand, not a new thing to memorize.
So this document is front-loaded. The first half builds the model slowly. The second half shows how Anchor packages it and how the projects compose it. Don't rush the first half.