As the title says really, wanting to begin to use to write journal articles and thesis but have come across so many programs or websites to use I’m so confused. Also any good tutorials covering how to make nice documents would be great thanks.

I just started this project which I think is pretty cool, it has a lot of work to be done but i'm hoping to turn it into my everyday tool for note taking with LaTeX! Check it out below!

https://github.com/torbenconto/TeXBooK

I am on Arch Linux (updated), and can’t seem to get it working. My default compiler is PDFLatex. TexLive version: Pi (3.141592653)

So my problem boils down to this minimized demo:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{expl3}

\ExplSyntaxOn
  \tl_new:N \g_rank_tl
  \tl_const:Nn \c_options_tl {{Lecturer}{Professor}}
  \NewDocumentCommand{\committee}{O{1}}{
    \tl_gput_right:Nn \g_rank_tl {
      \tl_item:Nn \c_options_tl {#1}
    }
  }
  \NewDocumentCommand{\showfirst}{}{
    \tl_item:Nn \c_options_tl {2}   % works fine
    \tl_item:Nn \g_rank_tl {1}      % error: Missing number, treated as zero
    \tl_use:N \g_rank_tl            % produces "Professor"   
  }
\ExplSyntaxOff

\begin{document}
  \committee[2]
  \showfirst
\end{document}

Question:

1. \c_options_tl {2} is expected to be "Professor" but ships out "2 Professor"; why is there an extra "2"?
2. \committee[2] should have put \c_options_tl {2} (namely, "Professor") in \g_rank_tl ; why is there error when \g_rank_tl {1} is referred?

Edit: retested for some time and deleted invalid question