I think passive processing is one, intuition is the other. You can solve a problem by thinking about it for hours or by once looking at it and immediately knowi

I think passive processing is one, intuition is the other. You can solve a problem by thinking about it for hours or by once looking at it and immediately knowing a good solution. It's about experience, intelligence and probably many other factors. And that doesn't mean you'll perform well in technical interviews. They're often about specific algorithms most people would never implement themselves. Few are about the problem solving part of programming.