You're the one complained:

> My Emacs config file is a hodge-podge of little snippets I don't properly understand

People giving you truly time-saving advice. Use a good model to unhodge-podge it. You can even ask it to explain every single Lisp snippet it makes, to the detail and granularity level you prefer - want a big picture, please; would you like nitty-gritty details - ask no more. It's not like it's gonna build a "massive configuration" and absolutely will refuse to make it make sense to you.