Redstone is neat, but try it with a mod such as RedLogic. It gives you the basic logic gates——and, or, xor, timers, pulse formers, etc.——which makes it all much simpler to get started.

It does mean you can skip much of the "physics of redstone", but I don't know how valuable learning that is in the first place. The physics of Redlogic is a fair bit simpler.