In my experience truly powerful developers are able to do this, but even many Google L5s will just look up this code every time.
Indeed I am a Google L5, and I usually do look this stuff up (or ChatGPT it). I think it’s more important to remember roughly what libraries do at a high level (what problems they solve, how they differ from other solutions, what can’t they do) than trivia about how exactly you use them.
I personally don’t feel “fluent” programming this way, and maybe it is my own perfectionism, but this and the other replies, while certainly understandable and defensible, ring a little more hollow than I would like. I think going down below the level of “just know what APIs broadly exist” and actually being fluent at that lower level is usually necessary for the true 10-100x devs I’ve seen to work at that level. Usually this is achieved by building lots and lots of practical, deployable systems, but this just means it is implicitly taught through experience, and I wonder if there is a better way. Anyway, trying to figure out if it was this popular, but IMO flawed, type of fluency you were referring to was my original question, and I thank you for your answer.
Indeed I am a Google L5, and I usually do look this stuff up (or ChatGPT it). I think it’s more important to remember roughly what libraries do at a high level (what problems they solve, how they differ from other solutions, what can’t they do) than trivia about how exactly you use them.
I personally don’t feel “fluent” programming this way, and maybe it is my own perfectionism, but this and the other replies, while certainly understandable and defensible, ring a little more hollow than I would like. I think going down below the level of “just know what APIs broadly exist” and actually being fluent at that lower level is usually necessary for the true 10-100x devs I’ve seen to work at that level. Usually this is achieved by building lots and lots of practical, deployable systems, but this just means it is implicitly taught through experience, and I wonder if there is a better way. Anyway, trying to figure out if it was this popular, but IMO flawed, type of fluency you were referring to was my original question, and I thank you for your answer.