Work , work , work, i spent countable hours to understand how really Oracle ADF works, nothing fits together, but the development cycle was kind of heavy , even with my experience i was pretty challenge on thing which i should know but didn't knew.
Anyway desperation is always there and my advise just keep pushing in small steps and dont forget to use some sort of version control, i started to use it only at the end of the project, but it make sense, believe me when i say without good version control you lost. Realy go get some Gitbucket for your project right know.