Hi! I'm also someone who has never had any coding experience and having started learning how to make games through bitsy. Personally for me, for my first interactions with bitsy I found it a lot easier to focus on 'plain bitsy' (without hacks) and trying to make little messy interactive/fiction games, learning to add new elements as I go. 

I think this is because when things go wrong, there's less unfamiliar things to look through to see what the problem is, so it's easier to rectify when there's less things to think about, and then add more things when I feel more familiar/confident with whatever I've been doing. At the moment, I don't really know enough about coding to understand why the hacks are or aren't working without a LOT of googling/asking for help.

I also found it easier to start by just messing around and continually adding to a concept/idea as you go, rather than try and envision a finished product and work towards that. (not saying you're doing that, was just a trap I fell into at the start, which made it difficult because I wasn't aware of the parameters of bitsy and what I could do within the system.)

I'm not sure if you've found it already, but Borksy by Sean.S. Leblanc is really helpful for incorporating hacks if you wanted to go down that route. - https://ayolland.itch.io/borksy . I also found Dan Cox's videos really helpful for learning bitsy - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlXuD3kyVEr5sF4iM2CszNt-fSVZDqxUm.

But that's just what I've personally found! If there's a certain hack that's really inspires you and makes you happy trying to learn it, then go for it!

Hope that maybe helps a little bit! :)