Hi Khufu, I recommend always using whatever the stable version release is with the latest bugfixes. So not the experimental builds. 2.79a is great because it's a stable release plus bug fixes.

I'm also currently running an experimental build of 2.8 for testing parameters of the new EEvEE engine, however it kind of sucks because none of the stuff you need for work is enabled (modifiers etc) so I'm starting this series in 2.79 which will probably cover versions a, b and c of 2.79.

The main render engine in Blender is Cycles and by the end of the 2.79 releases Cycles will then be at it's optimum and will be ported into 2.8 pretty much as is, so as I'm focusing on Cycles the techniques I'm teaching should work perfectly in any future updates.