Customizing Drupal

Hi,

I'm new to the forum, new to web development and new to creating web sites.

I'm going to create a community-based website, for which my research tells me that Drupal is the right choice for a CMS. Joomla has more users, but for communities Drupal is better. Elgg and Pligg don't have nearly the number of programmers trained on them. etc. etc.

I read that Drupal provides a framework to connect together various modules that I need for a social networking site. E.g., profiles (photos, friends, invites etc. etc.), polls, blogs, shopping carts for virtual/real goods, etc. etc. I'm not going to need everything all at once, and many of the modules are not part of the Drupal core, but that's okay.

So here's my question -- if I wanted to add, say, a shopping cart, how would I go about deciding where to find that module? Would I go to the eCommerce section, and read the descriptions of the various modules, and try some of them out ? Is there a primer or an overview of what module is good for what kinda thing, something that brings it all together per category ?

Also, for most things, can I get away without programming, and simply "connecting" various modules together?

Thanks for your help.
Jug