Ask HN: What tools and workflow do you use to understand new libraries

During my PhD I decided to use a C++ library to build my simulation app. One of the reasons I decided to use that particular library was that it was small and that it compiled quickly! That was very useful because my workflow in understanding the code was go through examples, change a line here, put a print statement there, compile and run. It was fine back then, because I had a lot more time to concentrate on a single task, but it did take quite some time. So I basically used git, vim and make.

Now, I am doing something similar but I don't really have the same amount of time. The 2 things I have added to my usual process is to use a debugger (lldb) and document all my findings using Dropbox Paper. I feel that this is definitely much better than before but I am sure that this could be made much more efficient. So the question is what types of tools/workflows are more widely used?