I'm by no means a programming newbie, so maybe this skews what I'm about to say, but I find that reviewing release notes and changelogs is often quite useful wh

I'm by no means a programming newbie, so maybe this skews what I'm about to say, but I find that reviewing release notes and changelogs is often quite useful while I'm still in the belly of a learning curve. If the project in question has a cohesive vision (big "if"), this can help frame the trajectory of that vision and get you to march in step with the project's state of the art more quickly.