There are a couple of places in the curriculum where the prose explicitly instructs students to memorize certain concepts, methods, functions, etc. I’m here to say the same thing I said when my ninth grade teacher told us that the best way to be decent human beings was to memorize a whole bunch of prayers: Nope. But also Nope, Nope and Nope.
Lots of times in life educators reach for memorization. They tell us it’s the way to be useful, it’s the way to remember, and that it’s core to whatever topic we’re trying to master. But again, typically, not so much.
There are very limited uses for memorizing things like that. If a thing is worth knowing, and will come up, you’ll be able to build muscle memory by constantly needing it. And yes, for the first dozen or so times, you’ll need to look it up. But that seems far superior to me than spending hours upon hours drilling something into your brain.
There are obvious exceptions. I’d imagine doctors need to memorize lots of drug-related dosage info and interactions. In the midst of a life-saving proceedure, there might not be time to look it up. But in coding, there’s nothing you can’t just read the docs for when you need it.
(And if you’re thinking, “but interviews!”, a reasonable interview should be asking you about concepts, ideas, implementations, etc., but very much not to whiteboard-repeat some built-in function. It’s far more relevant for them to test your Googling skills than your memorization skills.)
One such snippet ^. I could spend hours memorizing this, but why in the ever loving universe would I bother?
In coding, it seems far more useful to develop instincts about what sort of methods are useful in which cases, than to memorize literally anything. For one thing, best practices are constantly changing. For another, you can always just look it up. And like all things, the more you do it, the more you’ll remember it, and pretty soon you’ll have memorized it without noticing it, and certainly without going back to grade-school study habits.
I’m sure sections like these are well intentioned, but when I read them, I just see “you’re going to use these a lot, consider bookmarking some of the docs that best help you understand them.”
I’d recommend you do the same.