[jrumbut]

If you can't learn by example, which is the inductive process and the one that I am most comfortable with and it sounds like you are too, you need to learn by deduction.

For node or Ruby or other pure open source environments there are endless examples on the Internet and when you want to learn you can read 50 of them until they start making sense. When there isn't much documentation, you have to deduce the reasoning that went into the codebase or you may never make progress. It's a slower and more demanding process.

On a side note, before the explosion of web content, this was how a lot of programming had to be learned. Maybe talk to/bring in older programmers to help you?