[kafkaesq]

Very sadly, I don't. Beyond the Box Model (and the basic notion of "cascading"), there seem to be very few mental models, as such, out there; if anything, people tend to learn through a collection of experiences (many of them negative, at the outset).

Not that there aren't important concepts to understand. Just that the quirks and exceptions tend to rise up from the mists, and -- just when you thought you got a handle on some particular area of functionality -- overwhelm the nice, tidy, conceptual aspects.

Which is why it has proved to be by far the hardest programming environment I've ever hard to learn.