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Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

But just spending an insignificant amount of time learning to remember the syntax that you use constantly is even more efficient: why waste time looking up what you already know? Spend that time on the real thing you want to do, instead.

Not remembering what you can look up is the beginner's shortcut, not looking up what you can just remember is the advanced tactic, and is what gets you to fluency in any subject.

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You're assuming anyone here seriously resists learning something they use all the time because they can google it, something I have a hard time believing yet you assert otherwise.

In reality, the things you tend to google every time you need it are precisely things you don't actually use enough to memorize. When you do memorize them, enough time elapses each time to where you forget.

Exactly this. Googling to me is long term memory - I can access it, but it takes a tiny bit longer to retrieve. Stuff I use more frequently I do memorize.

As with many other things, the extremes might be clearer but the interesting parts lay in the huge grey area in between. Sure, we might not need to deliberately memorize syntax, but what about memorizing the different ways of writing loops (for the lack of an better example atm)?

My take is that there is value in putting in deliberate effort to remember the key takeaways from our readings or talks we've listened to (among other things), as the original comment pointed out. The blog post is then on how to go about doing it.

Don't ask me, ask the person I responded to. It sure sounded like that was their modus operandus and their counter-argument to the article's "remember the things you are enthusiastic about learning".

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