Cams for Dummies ??

Looking at cam specs only serves to make my head spin..... All they do is confuse the hell out of me. I put what was supposed to be an erson "340 spec" cam in a 318 in a Cordoba back in the 80s, and it made a lotta noise but was the biggest disappointment/ dawg I ever had. Since, usually once I can read the cam chart on account of my head stops spinning I pick 1 or 2 smaller than what I was originally thinking.
I have had good luck with driver 318s with a noticeable improvement just by putting a stock 360-2 bbl cam in said 318. I've never been down a dragstrip, my vehicles are all dailys, that have to get us where we need to go. I see/hear of people putting all kinds of radical sounding (to me anyway) cams in their cats and claim how great they are...... Good for them. Including lots of suggestions for the "340 cam". Being that was back in the 80s I don't remember exactly the numbers of that cam I was so disappointed in, but it was supposed to be "close to"a stock 340 according to the idiot I bought from back in the "super shops" days