Don't get me wrong. Hyprland is great. I like it a lot. It looks fresh, it's easy to configure and the keybindings are super easy to implement, but it's also very barebones. Most of the functionality expected from a DE come from external software. Be it a top bar, an app launcher, a notification daemon or anything else. Each has to be configured independently, which is good for some people, but not really for me. I could probably make Waybar look good if I spent a lot of time on it, but as of today, meh. Rofi is neat, fast and minimalist, ~~but looks straight from the 90', and as a result feels janky next to the hypermodern look and feel of Hyprland~~ (Edit: OK I've found some nice themes for Rofi, just need to find a way to add blur behind the window). Quick settings are inexistant, or could be implemented with a collection of shell or Python scripts I'm not really motivated enough to pursue. A full Hyprland DE with top bar, quick settings and app launcher, with unified looks and centralized setings would actually be awesome and might make me switch (I know it's not the philosophy of this project).
Which brought me back to Gnome 45. I wouldn't use vanilla Gnome without extensions, but with a few QOL or eyecandy extensions like dash-to-dock and Blur My Shell, it can look as fresh and modern as you want. The quick settings popup may have made me lazy, but it's an incredibly efficient tool for switching Wifi networks, audio devices or power profiles. All the media keys work out of the box. Gnome Settings is what a settings app should be, complete yet simple to navigate and use. I love the new workspace indicator in the top bar.
Gnome is "boring" in a good way. It's a complete and unified experience, works great out of the box, is predictable and lets you be as productive or procrastinating as you want without getting in your way, while being infinitely extensible to let you tweak as little or as much as you want.
Thank you Gnome devs for your awesome work. Thank you Hyprland devs for letting me try something new and fresh, even if it's not for me.
In your case I would just start by copying a full setup someone else made and then customizing it, starting from scratch always takes a lot of effort. Reddit's unixporn was great for that, the alternatives on lemmy are sadly still a little empty.
I found the opposite actually. I tried others' configs but nothing clicked and I didn't learn about the bits I didn't really care about
Starting from scratch, got the bare minimum to use it (launcher, three finger swipe, terminal bind) and then just attempted to daily drive it fixing bits as I go
Also always had the option to bail back to gnome on reboot if I needed to do something urgently that didn't work