When a student asks Jeff Tucker how to start game programming, he tells them to write a program makes the screen blank, renders a spinning triangle & stops when the user presses a key. This simple program has all the elements of a game engine (except for sound) AND gets the student started.
Many students are paralyzed trying to get a perfect start. The important thing is to get started. If you head in the wrong direction, just throw out the code. The coding experience can help you gain as much knowledge as the formal research.
We talked about writing against interfaces and fakes for unknown parts of the program.