I get it up and running, build something trivial, read the API a bit, and maybe try running the test suite. You can learn a fair amount of stuff just by using

I get it up and running, build something trivial, read the API a bit, and maybe try running the test suite. You can learn a fair amount of stuff just by using a thing. Then if it's remotely interesting, I start the RTFM slog (slog meaning I don't really learn efficiently from reading). I also like to skim the Changeling, and fish for high quality video summaries in YouTube. A recent example was I was curious how to write a PostgreSQL client. I used a PG client, skimmed the source code to see how it was wired up, read the public API docs, and then watched this video in the PG wire protocol... https://youtu.be/qa22SouCr5E https://youtu.be/qa22SouCr5E. If you're trying to learn and dont have much of a foundation for evaluating a open source, try building it from scratch. When I wanted to better understand the DSL is testing framework, I implemented a basic testing library of my own. It was really informative.