How to learn "advanced" LaTeX?

Question

I'm a math Phd student and I've been using LaTeX for a few years now, using MikTex 2.9, Texworks and sometimes TexStudio on my own machine. I'd like to know how LaTeX "works" as an application. This is vague so here are some concrete goals of mine:

Understand how MikTex 2.9 communicates with Texworks (or texstudio etc)
Create custom themes or document classes (custom beamer theme, documentclass{mycalendar})
How to use custom beamer themes or custom document classes on my own machine (where to put the sty files etc)

Is there a single resource to find such information? A textbook that shows this technical side (not just giving me the code to copy paste). Or am I stuck with solving each roadblock as it comes individually?
I'm happy to clarify since I now this is vaguely stated.

Uwe Ziegenhagen · Accepted Answer

Well, welcome to the wonderful world of TeX and LaTeX and welcome to TSX. The best way to learn is to practise! I started 20 years ago, step by step (or requirement by requirement) I started to understand more and more of how to adjust LaTeX. BTW: I never managed to learn more TeX than just the basics.
Regarding the points you mentioned:

Pretty much any editor communicates with the TeX/LaTeX system via system call, I do not know any editor that does not. Sometimes it is a bit more advanced but essentially it just means to call the external pdflatex/xelatex/lualatex.exe with the name of the TeX file as parameter.
Just do it. Start by creating a custom beamer theme, it is not that difficult. Take existing (easy) templates and see how they work (see for example my template here https://www.uweziegenhagen.de/?p=2877 which does rather basic adjustments)
This is as far as I can tell a matter of creating a local texmf tree. If you search here on TSX for this term you should be able to find a few good questions and answers describing how to set it up. I am too lazy to do it so I always put my styles into the document directories (I know I shouldn't do this...)

I doubt that there is a single book that contains all the answers to your questions, but here on tex.stackexchange.com you will find or get all the answers.

How to learn "advanced" LaTeX?

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