They are doing the real deal thing - for each problem, designing a language in which to express the solution, and then writing the solution. Part of the point is that the building such solutions isn't really teachable in the context of a tutorial. If a tutorial can teach it, then it's probably a pretty shallow skill, and shallow skills should get designed away into a solution-oriented programming language, and any tutorials for THAT language, etc etc...

The language they use to do that (O-Meta) is then a language-defining language, and designing THAT means balancing on a level of abstractions that is at least three levels deep, and each of those abstraction levels is hard and necessary. They achieve great simplicity by thinking damn hard.

On the other hand, the mailing list (as noted by the other respondent) is a pretty interesting place with few flamewars.

Ask around on their mailing list they are quite helpful. I also asked a similar question from the viewpoint of the TECS book: http://www.mail-archive.com/fonc@vpri.org/msg01614.html