I have a ton of trouble recognizing peoples faces or names, especially out of the usual context. But I can remember programs I wrote in detail 10 years ago, network protocols, RFCs/IEEE standards. I think I have decent recall and pattern matching in some areas at a great expense of some other things. It took me until I was in my 20s to know what order the months are in a year. Another anomaly, my hobby besides computers is cars and I can identify every make and model and most years of almost every car on Earth. The name of my neighbors? Not so much. Brains are weird.
ime a lot of the ease of pattern recognition and recall comes down to interest. It's likewise easy for me to recall how and why a 302 differs from a 351 or a 460 but I couldn't tell you which letters proceed/follow 'j' without sounding it out in my head.
My solution has just been to fake it, if I can convince myself e.g. that my neighbors' names and faces are interesting/important than remembering them becomes almost impossible not to.
