> It's clear to me that the actually smart people don't need to recall someone else's clever solution, they just figure it out on their own from the observables

> It's clear to me that the actually smart people don't need to recall someone else's clever solution, they just figure it out on their own from the observables. You gotta be able to make connections. If you have to figure out everything from observables, you're gonna be very slow at anything that isn't truly uncharted territory compared to others. If your memory is lacking, you won't be able to make the leap from "here's what I'm seeing right now, here's a vaguely similar pattern from that past, what does that suggest?" That's where "just google it" breaks down too because if you don't know that the symptoms you're seeing are characteristic of a race condition, say, you won't know to google for "race condition"!