I think it's work either way. You either spend brain-time on memorizing the intricacies of a lot of prebuilt tools, and how / when one might apply them (modern c++) - or you dispense with the many tools, and spend your brain time on memorizing relatively few, but with more effort and detail required on their application. (C). I prefer the latter, but as you say - it's probably linked to personality to some extent, and quite "baked in".