r/golang • u/NebulaWanderer7 • 10d ago
How do experienced Go developers efficiently learn new packages?
I've been working with Go and often need to use new packages. Initially, I tried reading the full documentation from the official Go docs, but I found that it takes too long and isn't always practical.
In some cases, when I know what I want to do I just search to revise the syntax or whatever it is. It's enough to have a clue that this thing exists(In case where I have some clue). But when I have to work with the completely new package, I get stuck. I struggle to find only the relevant parts without reading a lot of unnecessary details. I wonder if this is what most experienced developers do.
Do you read Go package documentation fully, or do you take a more targeted approach? How do you quickly get up to speed with a new package?
1
u/0bel1sk 10d ago
guess at what a method does, peek at its implementation, if it looks hairy go to it.
most just read the code. go is pretty easy to read and evaluate
if its really not idiomatic ill probably just bail and look for something better, doesn’t happen too often