foo.bar.[0] = baz
foo.bar.[1] = bop
and then copying and pasting the results into jq makes the whole iteration loop much much tighter.
As for learning it, it's the same with any tool, key is repetition and regular use.
The tool for that is likely https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron It's probably the best tool to go back and forth easily between json and line oriented.
The first and foremost thing to know about jq is that it's built on path expressions, so the first thing to learn is how to write path expressions. Fortunately path expressions are easy in jq!
.a # Get the value of the "a" key
# in the current input object
.[0] # Get the value of the first
# element in the current input
# array
.a[0] # Get the value of the first
# element in the array at the
# key named "a" in the current
# input object.
#
# I.e., path expressions chain:
.a[0].b # Get the value of the "b"
# key in ...
Things get really interesting when you see that `select(conditional expression)` can be used in path expressions joined with `|`.
Just this can be very useful. It's also useful to know about the magic `path()` function, and `paths`, which I often use to just list all the paths in an input JSON text. Try applying `jq -c paths` to a `kubectl get -o json pods` command's output!