What I found very useful for creating a blockchain application from scratch is the following free guide:
https://medium.com/programmers-blockchain/create-simple-blockchain-java-tutorial-from-scratch-6eeed3cb03faIt requires some basic java knowledge, but I guess the guide is so fundamental that can be easily translated to other programming languages as well. You will learn how to
1. make your own blockchain
2. set up blocks that can store data
3. make signatures to chain your blocks
4. mine blocks and set difficulty
and in the second part of this tutorial (follow the link at the end of the first part) you will learn how to
5. create a wallet, and
6. send transaction on your blockchain
Probably you won't be able to use this code for real time applications, but what I found extremely useful was the fact that I could grasp the basic bitcoin terminology in the practical sense of the word, not just in theory. You can easily go from there.