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a lot of marketing speakI have just re-read the page, I cannot see a single instance of «marketing speak». What do you mean?
> I'm dumped into an IDE that I've never used
To get started, [F1] for the documentation (also cursor-contextual) and [F5] to "compile and run" will suffice¹. It's a lightweight IDE, a "type in the text editor and run, you can learn features and configure preferences later - easy first, complex if you need" thing.
¹: <menu> > 'Compiler' > 'Compile/Run [F5]' (first row)
¹: <menu> > 'Help' > 'Help... [F1]' (first row)
> if the programs had a comment at the top about what the program will do
The purpose is just "minimal code for a simple demonstration of the area in the filename": "2DDrawing.sb", "Accelerometer.sb", "Array.sb", "CanvasGadget.sb", "Cypher.sb"... A few dozen example files to cover the the language and libraries. The documentation also contains code snippets (as in "this is a common context for this command"), but the example files are full small programs.
> "how does this work" "how do I use this"
The documentation in the website is at https://www.spiderbasic.com/documentation/ - it is linked in the first paragraph and it is in the "Support" section of the top menu. Otherwise, with the software installed, the documentation is offline ([F1] opens it).