The learning curve is only steep if your totally new to it.
If you've always recorded to tape, it takes a long time to get used to exporting and stuff. I still get confused with recording midi to audio. If you record midi from a plug in you have to export and if you record midi from an external sound module you record like normal. I'm constantly getting them mixed up and ending up with blank tracks.
Latency issues are a pain in the ass too, plus getting a feel for how the limits of your computer affect what you do.
But once you get the feel for everything you start automatically knowing what to do.
Like, I know for sure if I'm recording audio I have to use virtual memory because I don't have enough ram, but if I'm recording midi, I have to make sure virtual memory is off because of the delay between hitting the key and hearing the note. You learn little things like spreading your instruments out on multiple tracks so everything isn't playing all at once all the way through the song.
If you have 24 tracks of contant music playing on all tracks, the hard drive can't keep up so you have to leave gaps occasionally so that the hard drive can catch up.