[hiAndrewQuinn]

I'm an intentionally slow adopter of new technology unless it's going to be core to the value add. So generally when I set out to actively learn a new library I pick one that's already been active for at least a decade.

By that point most popular stuff has at least one good published book on it explaining it in an accessible way. William S. Vincent's Django for Beginners, Robin Wieruch's Road to React, (a little older) The Definitive Guide to SQLite, and (a little heavier) Haskell Programming From First Principles are all excellent examples of this that I've read cover to cover.

Maybe the only strange thing about my approach is that I generally take notes by making Anki flashcards while I read. I generally like to learn libraries well ahead of whenever I think I might actually use them if possible, and this is the only way a baseline level of information about e.g. Django/React is going to survive in my head for 2 years before I actually finally stumble across something that makes me think, "Hey, this would be a really good usecase for a Django/React project."