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This mentality works in general, but there are drawbacks. A large part of your problem solving ability is unconscious. If you don't have critical pieces of information committed to memory, you're essentially creating a ceiling on the types of problems you're capable of solving.

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This might be the most insightful comment I've read on HN. I think this is the point people either miss or don't bother to address when claiming that they can just search for "arcane" facts instead of memorizing them.

In at least some cases, you can get by with having only the solution metadata committed to memory. For example, you might remember various data structures and their time complexity well enough to select the proper one, without necessarily being able to implement them all from memory.

But you better remember how to verify your memory is correct, at least via research if not working it out yourself.

In the end, you can either turn the information into a program or you cannot.

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