I'll admit I have a bit of a skill issue here.

I'm letting go of reading every single line, especially within well-scoped modules that don't affect anything else. On the other hand I struggle to form the mental model required to "control the ideas", as it were, without reading at least some critical sections of the code and without grasping how the fundamental data structures relate to each other.

Are we saying that opening the editor is basically a mistake?

No its fine. The problem is trying to read all the code. Reading some is fine. I tend to focus on public APIs, and key areas. But not the thousands of lines which arre tests or will be refactored.

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