I'm sorry, but this how your post sounds :
Greetings and thanks for allowing me to respond in this forum.
My nickname is FooBar. I am a person who is interested in knowing how to perform brain surgery.
My story is complicated because I am not a doctor or surgeon or something similar, but I am interested in learning.
I have a university degree but it is not related to surgery.
would very much like to learn how to perform brain surgery.
That is why I decided to write directly in this forum to see if someone could guide me the things that I have to learn and the time it could take me to do these things.
I am a complete novice and I am not a surgeon. In reality I am more like an artist.
I appreciate what you can share with me, at least to know if it is so complicated better to stay out of it. Thank you.
Some of the things you would need to do (just some pointers, not an exhaustive list by any means):
Learn programming skills, regardless of the language. I have been informed that 'python' might be easy for a starting programmer.
Learn the C++ language, which MAME is written in.
Take on some 'simple' personal projects, in order to gain some experience.
Find a bug report in your favorite small sized project, read the codebase so you understand what it does, and propose a patch that aims to fix that bug.
Learn how to read and understand the code base of another emulator, like MAME or QEMU to get you started on what is involved.
Learn all the detailed specifics of the hardware platform you would like to emulate.