Makes perfect sense. And i would be lying if i said i hadn’t struggled there myself.
However, to put it into more concrete terms, i suggest you do the following:
- Fish from land (make a dummy app just to test out layouting and local APIs)
- Go boating without trying to fish (use the API from a language you already master, or even by just pointing a web browser to it)
I know this is a bit boring, but it definitely does help only having to worry about one thing at a time.
For me it took several years until i actually got started properly, and it was certainly helpful that just by virtue of my day job i kept building skill and experience with interacting with many different services in many different ways, to the level where that part of the problem became trivial. I also dabbled in trying to make SFOS apps, but it really took some (lack of) really tasty fish, i.e. services not working so well through the Android layer any more to get me properly motivated to overcome the last hurdles.
This part involved many stupid questions on #sailfishos on freenode IRC.
I guess one of the reasons for such tutorials not existing is because the leap is actually really really small, and then you are out on the other end into specifics and details.
For web services available in XML over HTTP, you basically don’t have to worry about any of the details to get it in to your app for the basic use case. Just use XmlListModel, and similarly for JSON, there is the less official, but quite good JSONListModel
Throw either of those in as a model in your SilicaListView and you are off to the races.