I do not think any of us are born with the ability to understand the structure of GitHub and Rails projects. These are learned abilities. How do we learn them?

I do not think any of us are born with the ability to understand the structure of GitHub and Rails projects. These are learned abilities. How do we learn them? Two ways. (1) spend time on our own. This can either be brute force (i.e. just exploring every folder over several projects until a pattern emerges) or though a guided tutorial. (2) Ask someone with more experience. As for as (2) goes, when someone asks me a question that I think is trivial, I try to realize that its not trivial to them. This person is asking because they respect my ideas and they think I can save them a good deal of time. I don't hold everyone's hand though. Sometimes I do respond with "consider searching for X and trying Y on your own". Where the appropriate line lies for direct answers versus gentle encouragement, I do not know. However, politeness, in both cases, is free.