I'm new to the game too, but I am an Eve vet so many of the mechanics and memes are already familiar to me. That helps a lot with preventing things from being too bewildering. I've been playing less than a week now but here are some thoughts:-
a) Skills, yes, there's lots of them, and too much to choose from. This is part of the fun in my book. Some skills require prerequisites, this is easy to determine if you click on the little "I" information button. What you might be getting confused with is the primary and secondary attributes that determine how many EPs it takes to raise a skill by one level. Remember when you created your account and you made all of those choices about which "school" you went to? Those choices determined your characteristics. Check you character page.
b) Missions, they're pretty tedious. They're not where a game like this will shine (which is in the player driven interactions and content). One thing to understand though is that all of the game is PVP, whether you are competing for spawns, trying to buy raw materials to produce with, or out in "beta". All of that having been said yes, those early missions are annoying, particularly if somebody is farming the spawns. One piece of advice here, start the "triangle route" transport missions (each of the main hubs on each of the three alpha islands). They're also boring, but they yield reasonable money, reasonable rep, and you're not having to compete with anybody. They are also going to be nerfed soon so milk them whilst you can.
c) Yep, mining is boring. But there are people who love it. It can be very profitable but it's not without risk (I had an officer overseer spawn on my head yesterday and instajib two mining bots). The thing about mining is as much finding good spots to mine in, and getting your ore out safely, as it is about actually sucking the stuff out of the ground. Don't forget to use the different types of charges and scanners appropriately, and don't forget to add waypoints to your map so you remember the spots. It's not for everybody, but, truth be told, nothing on the market would be there without those who enjoy a bit of mining....
d) Check the wiki, it explains the basics well. Ignoring prototyping, essentially you take an item, reverse engineer it with a decoder to get a CT (the higher the level of the decoder the better ME or "Material Efficiency you get). You then chuck the CT into a factory with the right materials and tell it to produce. Sounds simple? It is. But it's also a lot more complex than that. The more relevant skills you have the more efficient, quicker, cheaper etc you'll be. If you go into industry in a big way you'll find yourself competing with other players just as much as you would if you were firing missiles at them.
e) Yep, though there are some tips above. Not losing bots (like I seem to have a habbit of doing) is one of the best ways of not losing money. Truth be told though you don't need a great deal of money to start with.
tldr version, yep, there's a steep learning curve here, but once you get your head around things you'll find a lot of depth. My hope is that it becomes as deep as Eve, if it does we have a very, very good game on our hands. You're just dipping your toes in the water at the moment, my advice would be to keep dabbling, try out different things (carefully), and not get too impatient.
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