on reading source code as a habit

there's a version of learning to code where you only ever read tutorials. you get fast at building things that look like other things. you never really know why they work.

at some point i started reading source code the way other people read books. not to extract a recipe but to understand how someone thought. redis was the first one that really rewired me. the comments in the source are unusually honest. antirez explains the tradeoffs, the things he tried that didn't work, the places where he made a bet.

that kind of reading changes what questions you ask. instead of 'how do i implement this' it becomes 'why did they implement it this way.' the second question is harder and more useful.

i try to do at least one source dive per month now. a library i use but don't understand. a tool i take for granted. the goal isn't mastery. it's familiarity - that sense that you've been in the kitchen and you know roughly where things are.

it also makes you more humble. you find the hacks, the compromises, the TODO comments that are years old. everything real is messier than its documentation suggests.