Ubuntu. IntelliJ +Scala plugin. I write Scala 90% of the time. 99% of the time, before I call any function, I jump "navigate to source" in intelliJ, and have a

Ubuntu. IntelliJ +Scala plugin. I write Scala 90% of the time. 99% of the time, before I call any function, I jump "navigate to source" in intelliJ, and have a quick glance on it. Most of the time, type ascription is enough, sometimes I skim through doc, and occasionally, if it's sketchy library, I look at implementation. This is very quick process that takes maybe 10-15seconds. Sometimes when Im not under pressure, while I'm at sources, I check also some similiar APIs, and implementation, to see and learn 'hows' and 'whys'. Using this I quickly gain pretty solid knowledge of libraries I use. If I'm really stuck, I opened 3d party github, and scan issues, to see if there's something similiar. Lots of times there is issue or something, but I'll admit, lots of time there isn't. This is when I start googling, which sometimes take me to Stackoverflow. If not, I use gitter to ask authors. But this happen very rarely. Mostly all I need to do is dictated by library types I use. Occasionally, with shitty libraries that bring external configuration I have to check their docs on github. But I think it may be language related. Or experience perhaps. I had to do a bit of javascript with node.js (2 weeks +-), and I visited SO very very very often. Normally whenever I'm learning new language or framework, navigating to sources is my fasttrack to both language and framework/lib. There isn't a better way to learn what's right way to do stuff than to see authors of battle tested libraries solving difficult problems, and learning from their style. I can recommend that :) I'll admit your mileage may vary, and this may be specific to my job, but I'm pretty happy with this workflow, and I don't have anything against people using SO or something. Edit: I had forgotten important part - occasionally I spin REPL and try what library really does there. But that's also one of last resorts, when I'm stuck :) In Scala we have http://www.lihaoyi.com/Ammonite/ http://www.lihaoyi.com/Ammonite/ which makes it super easy to fetch and use external dependencies etc... so I guess tooling is also important part.