Learning new libraries without tutorials

What helps me:

  1. to look at the source code of the library
  2. to use a good IDE like IntelliJ Idea or Eclipse. There you can control click on any method and it jumps to the source code. When you type . after an object the autocomplete is very good and it lets you explore all the available options, it shows you the types. I find that with good autocomplete the documentation is less crucial.

The autocomplete in the Processing IDE is much more limited which doesn’t help much when using libraries.

Drawback: switching to a more powerful IDE takes some learning, as the code is pure Java and not “Processing-flavor Java”.

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