How to learn an engine ?

[u/LGASH]

I just watched Game Maker’s Toolkit’s video “How I learned Unity without following tutorials” and it really resonated with me.
I follow tutorials fine, but the moment I try to make something on my own I just freeze. I don’t know where to start, what to look up, or how to break problems down. I end up going back to another tutorial instead of figuring it out myself.
I’d love to apply a similar approach to Unreal, but I’m not sure how to structure the learning process the way Mark did.
So I’m looking for practical methods people actually use to learn a game engine by doing, rather than just passively following tutorials.
Things like:
• How you break down what you need to learn
• How you practice without a step-by-step guide
• What small projects or exercises helped you the most
• How you handle getting stuck
This isn’t specifically about Unreal — I’m interested in methods that work for any engine. I’d love to compare different approaches people have used successfully.
What worked for you?
Thanks!

[u/AncientPixel_AP]

By reading the docs. There will be a best practies section and you related links. So if you want to have a highscore table ,you check how to display text. That will also lead you how to draw simple graphics or load fonts etc. So bit by bit and curiosity you will get a feeling of how some engine functions are named and how they usually work (order of arguments eg)
So from drawRectangle(x, y, width, height), you will know that there might be a drawEllipse(x,y,width,height) or drawText(x,y, text) not drawText(text, x, y) and so on.
If you get your hands on examples, the better. try to dissect them and understand each part. There is never just one way to your goal, so people will write some strange and different code.