Effective strategies for studying frameworks/ libraries partially

Question

I remember the old effective approach of studying a new framework. It was always the best way to read a good book on the subject, say MFC. When I tried to skip a lot of material to speed up coding it turned out later that it would be quicker to read the whole book first. There was no good ways to study a framework in small parts. Or at least I did not see them then.

The last years a lot of new things happened: improved search results from Google, programming blogs, much more people involved in Internet discussions, a lot of open source frameworks.

Right now when we write software we much often depend on third-party (usually open source) frameworks/ libraries. And a lot of times we need to know only a small amount of their functionality to use them. It's just about finding the simplest way of using a small subset of the library without unnecessary pessimizations.

What do you do to study as less as possible of the framework and still use it effectively?

For example, suppose you need to index a set of documents with Lucene. And you need to highlight search snippets. You don't care about stemmers, storing the index in one file vs. multiple files, fuzzy queries and a lot of other stuff that is going to occupy your brain if you study Lucene in depth.

So what are your strategies, approaches, tricks to save your time?

I will enumerate what I would do, though I feel that my process can be improved.

• Search "lucene tutorial", "lucene highlight example" and so on. Try to estimate trust score of unofficial articles ( blog posts ) based on publishing date, the number and the tone of the comments. If there is no a definite answer - collect new search keywords and links on the target.
• Search for really quick tutorials/ newbie guides on official site
• Estimate how valuable are javadocs for a newbie. (Read Lucene highlight package summary)
• Search for simple examples that come with a library, related to what you need. ( Study "src/demo/org/apache/lucene/demo")
• Ask about "simple Lucene search highlighting example" in Lucene mail list. You can get no answer or even get a bad reputation if you ask a silly question. And often you don't know whether you question is silly because you have not studied the framework in depth.
• Ask it on Stackoverflow or other QA service "could you give me a working example of search keywords highlighting in Lucene". However this question is very specific and can gain no answers or a bad score.
• Estimate how easy to get the answer from the framework code if it's open sourced.

What are your study/ search routes? Write them in priority order if possible.

Answer 1

So what are your strategies, approaches, tricks to save your time?

Well, I search. I generally never ask questions, preferring to research myself. If worse comes to worse I'll read the documentation. In some cases (say, when I was doing some work with SharpSVN) I had to look at the source, specifically the test cases, to get some information about how the API worked.

Generally, I have to be honest, most of my 'study' and 'learning' is by accident.

For example, just a few seconds ago, I discovered how to get the "Recent" folder in C#. I had no idea how to do that before seeing the question, considering it interesting, and then searching.

So for me the real 'trick' is that I hang around on forums, answer questions, and accidentally pick up knowledge. Then when it comes time for me to research something; chances are I know a bit about it, and searching is easier and I can focus on the implementation [typically implementing a test program first] and progressing from there.

Answer 2

1) Search Google for my task

2) look at examples with a few different libraries, no need to tie myself down to Lucene for example, if I don't know what other options I have.

3) Look at the date of last update on the main page, if it hasn't been updated in 6-months leave (with some exceptions)

4) Search for sample task with library (don't read tutorials yet)

5) Can I understand what's going on without a tutorial? If yes continue if no start back at 1

6) Try to implement the task

7) Watch myself fail

8) Read a tutorial

9) Try to implement the task

10) Watch myself fail and ask on StackOverflow, or mail the authors, post on user group (if friendly looking)

11) If I could get the task done, I'll consider the framework worthy of study and read up the main tutorial for 2 hours (if it doesn't fit in 2 hours I just ignore what's left until I need it)

Answer 3

I have no recipe, in the sense of a set of steps I always follow, that's largely because everything I learn is different. Some things are radically new to me (Dojo for example, I have no fluency in Java script so that's a big task), some just enhancements of previous knowledge (Iknow EJB 2 well, so learning EJB 3 while on the surface is new with all its annotations, its building on concepts.)

My general strategy though is I'd describe as "Spiral and Park". I try to circle the landscape first, understand the general shape, I Park concepts that I don't get just yet, don't let it worry me. Then i go a little deeper into some areas, but again try not to get obsessed with one, Spiralling down into the subject. Hopefully I start to unpark and understand, but also need to park more things.

Initially I want answers to questions such as:

• What's it for?
• Why would I use this rather than that other thing I already know
• What's possible? Any interesting sweet spots. "Eg. ooh look at that nice AJAX-driven update"

I do a great deal of skim reading.

Then I want to do more exploring on the hows. I start to look for gotchas and good advice. (Eg. in java: why is "wibble".equals(var) a useful construct?)

Specific techniques and information sources:

• Most important: doing! As early as possible I want to work a tutorial or two. I probably have to get the first circuit of the spiral done, but then I want to touch and experiment.
• Overview documents
• Product documents
• Forums and discussion groups, learning by answering questions is my favourite technique.
• if at all possible I try to find gurus. I'm fortunate in having in my immediate colleagues a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Answer 4

1. Quick-start guides.
2. A quick look at the API documentation if available.
3. Reading sample codes.
4. Messing around YOU HAVE TO MESS AROUND (sorry for the caps).

If it's a small library/API with a small or no community you can always contact the developer himself and ask for help 'cause he'll probably be more than happy to help you; he's happy that one more person is using his API.

Answer 5

I would never read javadoc. As there often is none. And when there is, most likely it isnt up to date. So one gets confused at the best.

Start with the simplest possible tutorial you find within some minutes. Often the tutorial will lead you to further sources at the end, so then most of the time one is on a path that goes on and on, deeper and deeper.

Answer 6

The answer to your question depends on where you fall on the continuum of generality/specificity. Do you want to solve an immediate problem? Are you looking to develop a deep understanding of the library? Chances are you’re somewhere between those extremes. Jeff Atwood has a post about how programmers move between these levels, based on their need.

When first getting started, read something on the high-level design of the framework or library (or language, or whatever technology it is), preferably by one of the designers. Try to determine what problems they are trying to address, what the organizing principles behind the design are, and what the central features are. This will form the conceptual framework from which future understanding will hang.

Now jump in to it. Create something. Do not copy and paste somebody's code. Instead, when things don’t work, read the error messages in detail, and the help on those error messages, and figure out why that error occurred. It can be frustrating, when things don’t work, but it forces you to think, and that’s when you learn.

Answer 7

I use a three phase technique for evaluating APIs.

1) Discovery - In this phase I search StackOverflow, CodeProject, Google and Newsgroups with as many different combination of search phrases as possible and add everything that might fit my needs into a huge list.

2) Filter/Sort - For each item I found in my gathering phase I try to find out if it suits my needs. To do this I jump right into the API documentation and make sure it has all of the features I need. The results of this go into a weighted list with the best solutions at the top and all of the cruft filtered out.

3) Prototype - I take the top few contenders and try to do a small implementation hitting all of the important features. Whatever fits the project best here wins. If for some reason an issue comes up with the best choice during implementation, it's possible to fall back on other implementations.

Of course, a huge number of factors go into choosing the best API for the project. Some important ones:

1. How much will this increase the size of my distribution?
2. How well does the API fit with the style of my existing code?
3. Does it have high quality/any documentation?
4. Is it used by a lot of people?
5. How active is the community?
6. How active is the development team?
7. How responsive is the development team to bug patch requests?
8. Will the development team accept my patches?
9. Can I extend it to fit my needs?
10. How expensive will it be to implement overall?

... And of course many more. It's all very project dependent.

As to saving time, I would say trying to save too much here will just come back to bite you later. The time put into selecting a good library is at least as important as the time spent implementing it. Also, think down the road, in six months would you rather be happily coding or would you rather be arguing with a xenophobic dev team :). Spending a couple of extra days now doing a thorough evaluation of your choices can save a lot of pain later.

Answer 8

Mailing lists are a great resource as long as you do your homework first before asking questions.

Mailing list archives are invaluable for most of the questions I've had on CoreAudio related stuff.

Answer 9

It really depends on what the topic is and how much info is on it. Learning by example is a good way to start a topic brand new to you, especially if you're knowledgeable in other similar libraries or languages. You can take a topic you're familiar with, and say "I understand how to implement using X, lets see how it's done using Y".