This will be a short but important one.
One of the most valuable habits a developer can build is learning how things work under the hood. The fastest way? Command + Click.
Of course, you can (and should) read documentation, follow official tutorials, and look up concepts online. But nothing beats diving straight into the code itself.
When we code, we often take APIs as rigid and unchangeable — just “the way things are.” So when issues arise, we instinctively try to solve them within the API’s perceived constraints.
But in reality, it’s all just code.
Someone designed that API. Someone implemented its internals. Someone probably left behind obscure bugs and edge cases.
Once you internalize that everything you work with is malleable, your perspective on problem-solving fundamentally changes.
The good news is: most editors and IDEs make this easy.
In Neovim and Visual Studio Code, for example, this works out of the box if the Language Server Protocol (LSP) support is set up correctly. Rust and Go offer especially solid support here.
Mobile development is a little trickier.
Sometimes you’ll need to download libraries from source and attach their JARs manually. The same goes for Gradle plugins. But once you do, you’ll see — it’s all just code, and you can debug or extend it at whatever level you need.
Simple. Obvious. But worth being reminded of.
Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash