Is there a "best way" to learn a new framework/library?

Question

You see a lot of issues on TheDailyWorseThanFailure.com that all come down to people reinventing the wheel (poorly). How do you mitigate this? Is there a "best" approach to learning a new library/framework/etcetera?

Answer 1

Reading example code is very important, especially because they will often use this space to point out the 'special' parts of their framework.

Also, writing small simple apps so you can really concentrate on doing things 'correctly' wrt the framework you are attempting to learn.

Answer 2

Read the documentation though it is an extremely sleep inducing task.

Alternatively, most of them have video tutorials on their website, that could be more effective.

Answer 3

I think you have to accept that you're going to write some suboptimal code as you come up to speed with your new tech. You just have to be conscious of your n00bness, and try to mitigate it.

For instance, whenever I go to write some code that seems like it should be "built-in", I first google for "how to do x with y", and that generally tells me the best way to do it.

Answer 4

Reinventing the wheel is good from a learning perspective as it teaches you why things work in a library the way they do.

Answer 5

Am going on a tangent here, but reading blogs related to the technology has been very helpful for me. This continues to help me even after having expertise in a certain language/platform.

a) I always find some technical concept/language-caveats that I wasn't aware of b) It tells me somebody else's thinking/perspective

Answer 6

grasshopper

Master Kan: Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand.
[Young Caine tries to do so and fails]
Master Kan: When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.

and of course

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001160.html