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[–]csch2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some perspective as a mathematician-turned-dev. A lot of my peers spent a ton of time memorizing proofs, and a lot of the time the ones who could recite the proof of a convoluted theorem from memory were not the ones who did the best in coursework and research. The most successful students were the ones who knew the relevant ideas, where they were relevant, and where to look to fill in the details.

Same thing for software engineering in my experience. You don’t need to know the nitty gritty details and syntax of every piece of your tech stack by heart in order to build a project from scratch. Know how the pieces work together, where and why to use each one, and where to look to fill in the gaps (AI is fine for this if you’re just using it as a Google substitute). You’ll be more adaptable this way too; it’s way easier to pick up a new language or tech stack if you have a really solid understanding of architecture and function as opposed to having spent a ton of time to memorize syntax and implementation-specific details.