I had the same reservations at first.
Don't be too worried about not being a programmer. I can't program either, but I can read and understand code to a degree.
Doesn't take long to pick that sort of thing up at a basic level either (reading and understanding code), as it's all in plain English.
Xenforo and Theme Developers have done an outstanding job of making it nice and easy to work around (and if you want to get down and dirty at a code level you can too).
If you are using a shared host, make sure it's a good quality one rather than a big name which is often oversold (or have restrictions on things).
Another hot tip is if you are only intending to server say users in Canada, or Hawaii, or Japan, use a company with servers located in that local region, as it'll be faster for them to access.
I'm running on a shared hosting plan, but it's a 6GB Hex Core CPU running on NVMe SSD Storage with a set contention ratio.