I do divide-and-conquer. Find some part or feature of the tool you know from an outsider perspective, and then try to find it within the code. Then work backwar

I do divide-and-conquer. Find some part or feature of the tool you know from an outsider perspective, and then try to find it within the code. Then work backwards from there. Maybe even try to fiddle with it to change how it works, and see what happens. I think reading each file or reading the data structures is more difficult because you have no familiarity as to what is going on and you have no knowledge of why things are structured as they are, so it'd end up like reading a math paper straight down: memorize a ton of definitions without knowing why, until you finally get to the gist of it.