Learning how to automate tasks

I have been doing mostly manual work with objects but really need to create a script to go through a bunch ot text objects, strip some text from the front, and resize to fit the new text. What is a good way to learn how to do this? Group is currently over 400 objects (hence the need to automate) and whole section is replaced as new data comes in (via SVG).

Apologies for the elementary question but this would really help me out.