New Player - Bad time to start?

Hello.  Prospective new player here.  I’ve played a fair amount of Elite: Dangerous and recently was going to fire it up again but I want to try something else.  Watched some Youtube videos of SC and I’d like to give the game a try.  

However, I’m wondering if this is a bad time to join?  Seems like the game is quite broken currently and I don’t know if it’ll leave a bad taste in my mouth as a first impression.  Lots of posts of people spending hours just getting out of a station or elevator or even logging on.  Seems like them cancelling the Free Fly is a big sign that things are broken in a bad way.  Maybe they cancelled it because they realize they will lose more players than gain by exposing them to the game in this state?

Is there anyone actually playing the game successfully?  As a brand new player with no knowledge besides a couple YT videos, am I gonna be screwed joining now and not knowing workarounds and such? Like, if I don't even know what the correct thing is that was supposed to happen, how am I going to be able to tell that something glitched?