Seems like you're getting quality advice here
I've always looked at it as each smoker/grill is different.
Each persons taste/preference is different.
There are a ton of ways you can smoke or grill meat and someone will disagree.
My favorite part of grilling and smoking is the actual act of standing next to the grill while poking around trying to come up with ideas.
If I did have one opinion to offer would be to buy cheap meat at first. Grab you a cold ones(s) and spend a weekend messing with it. You can change so much when smoking meats. Everything from prep to cooking times and temps. Don't waste a lot of money on an expensive piece of meat until you get YOUR recipe and time/temps down.
Just my 2 cents