Mr Bob wrote:and from what I can figure out it looks like XAMPP is a very powerful program
Still not really.
XAMPP is not a program, XAMPP is a collection of different (highly sophisticated) software tools (Apache Webserver, MySQL SQL Database, PHP Interpreter, Perl Interpreter) and XAMPP is simply an abbreveation, where the first letter X is meant for "suited for all Operating Systems", so we have X, we have Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl or (only the first letters) X A M P P.
Such collections are also called "distributions", like Linux Distributions (for example Debian or SuSE, but Linux is of course superior to Xampp). XAMPP is meant for learning software development for WWW, how to design, create and build full funcional online sites, including a powerfull SQL Database (MySQL). And thats the reason, why you cannot simply "learn" Xampp. You have to learn about Apache, about PHP, about MySQL and how these tools all are working together.
The goal of Xampp is, to give a handy installation for software amateurs, because it is already quite difficult for most people, to install Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl on themselve and make these things work together. Each tool is developed by a different community.