When I tried my hand at compiling my firmware, i went towards VS code over arduino ie. My reasoning is beacuse i found the interface for VS code to seem somewhat familiar. That being said both are able to compile marlin. I just have 0 other expierence in coding so i went with what had a user interface that looked familiar.
That being said i think the arduino ide may be limited to certain chips.
I too have heard of people useing note ++ to compare their configuration.h files from known build to their modified builds. I haven’t tried it, though you still need to compile the firmware when the configuation.h configuration_adv.h and platform.ini are set up to your liking.
As the others have said, play around with pla or petg first. Print some tests like for retraction, temp, and tolerance tests to see where your printer is. Then try improving on those. As you get them to acceptable states, then try different materials, as youll have to re-framilliarise yourself with how different filament act. PETG and TPU can be very stringy compared to PLA.
I am curious as to what you intend to use the exotic materials for though. Perhaps there are other alternatives that could also preform just as well.