[robinhoode]

Reading that line made me cringe. Memorizing APIs come in handy for interviews or perhaps fixing bugs in production but not so much for day-to-day work.

Now, math equations or the minute details of data structures and algorithms.. Those can be hard to internalize and knowing them well is very helpful when reading papers or other diving into open source projects which make critical use of advanced, specialized knowledge.

[Filligree]

> Memorizing APIs come in handy for interviews or perhaps fixing bugs in production but not so much for day-to-day work.

Some interviews, maybe. As you say, it doesn't matter much for day-to-day work -- and so I put no weight on it when rating interviews either. If the candidate remembers the right method names, great. If they don't, who cares.

I always make a point of explaining that I'm not testing them on API memorization.

[matz1]

If there are 2 candidate, one can remember stuff and other don't, everything else being equal, who are u going to pick?