I'm a good programmer with a bad memory, but I went a completely different route to the guy in the article:
Better Tools
He talks about having to google things all the time, and memorize how to do things in his language. But that's the IDE's job.
Good tooling knows everything about the language you're using, and everything about your codebase and everything about every library you've ever used. If you want to do something with a File, you shouldn't ever need to remember anything more than the word "File". Type that, then ctrl+space, and the IDE will get you to the point where muscle memory can take over.
For other things, I just cheat. I have "\r\n" written in felt marker in the corner of my keyboard, because (since I'm also a bit dyslexic) I can never get the slashes in the right direction first try. This isn't my dev laptop, so I just got them wrong typing them out above, and had to google to verify. Despite having used them on a daily basis for 20 years.
But anyway, back to the point: Tools can and should replace nearly all the memorization that most people in this gig seem so proud to have done. So long as you're good at the problem solving bit, a bad memory won't hold you back.
Better Tools
He talks about having to google things all the time, and memorize how to do things in his language. But that's the IDE's job.
Good tooling knows everything about the language you're using, and everything about your codebase and everything about every library you've ever used. If you want to do something with a File, you shouldn't ever need to remember anything more than the word "File". Type that, then ctrl+space, and the IDE will get you to the point where muscle memory can take over.
For other things, I just cheat. I have "\r\n" written in felt marker in the corner of my keyboard, because (since I'm also a bit dyslexic) I can never get the slashes in the right direction first try. This isn't my dev laptop, so I just got them wrong typing them out above, and had to google to verify. Despite having used them on a daily basis for 20 years.
But anyway, back to the point: Tools can and should replace nearly all the memorization that most people in this gig seem so proud to have done. So long as you're good at the problem solving bit, a bad memory won't hold you back.