In desperate need of beginners help!

Let me first begin by saying that I am not retarded (lol), however, I’m feeling incredibly stupid right now. I’m just now venturing into programming for the first time in about 15 years (used C+ and visual basic when I was a kid). Lately I have been trying to learn Java primarily for Android development, but I suppose I’m still at the beginning stages. I can read the code, but without direction, couldn’t put anything together on my own. My primary goal is game development, so I decided to change paths and head back towards C++ and Cocos2dx for multi platform development. Problem is, I’m still stuck at the installation phase and already lost. I’ve spent at least 12 hours reading every tutorial on the Internet and I’m left with a few unanswered questions. I was trying to work with the beta 3.0 version of Cocos2dx, but after reading the forums, maybe that wasn’t the best one to start on? Should I stick to version 2.2, or does 3.0 make it easier for beginners to get started? My main problem is two things.

One, I’ve read that visual studio is required and other places I’ve read that it isnt. Can anyone give me some clarification on this? I was going to just use Eclipse. However, if visual studio makes getting started easier and I can later port it to eclipse for Android deployment, I’ll do whatever it takes.

I’ve tried to set my environment paths, but the one I’m hung up on is NDK_MODULE_PATH :
D:2dx\cocos2d-2.1rc0-x-2.1.3;D:2dx\cocos2d-2.1rc0-x-2.1.3\cocos2dx\platform\third_party\android\prebuilt. This doesn’t appear to exist in Cocos2dx 3.0, so I have no idea what to do.

Can anyone lead me to an absolute retard-proof guide on how to get started? I’ve read every “simple” guide I could find, and still can’t manage to get started. If right now you’re thinking to yourself “geez, this guy can’t even install the programs and set his environment paths correctly, how does he expect to start developing?” Well, we are thinking the same thing. I apologize for the stupid questions, but the answers just aren’t out there for me to find on my own. Thanks for your time.

One other thing, I’ve never used Cygwin before. I tried downloading it and installing the recommended files, but several weren’t on there. If anyone can tell me EXACTLY (as in the file name, since there are several of each type of file) it would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve also read that cygwin isn’t necessary anymore (is that just for Cocos2dx 3.0?) any tutorial on that would be nice.

~~Stick to 2.2 for now, as no complete tutorial yet for cocos2dx 3.0. If you insist in 3.0, there’s ‘samples’ folder that you can look into.
~~If you really have searched for any beginner tutorial, then you should know about building SimpleGame for raywenderlich tutorial,
There’s also cocos2d-x version at the “Getting Started” Section
-I’m gonna choose Eclipse over VIsual Studio if you use Windows. Well, maybe because I don’t know how to setup environtment for Windows Phone, but Eclipse for Android is fairly easy