[mck-]

Just what I thought. Sounds like author has awareness of the problem, but decided on a rather difficult solution.

You can still get into flow while looking up syntax you haven't committed to memory, but know how to find in 2 min.

I have a habit not to commit anything to memory that I could Google in 2 min, saving on RAM.

[randallsquared]

Two minutes? If I'm in flow (a very rare occurrence these days, sadly), five seconds is on the cusp of too long. In my editor, spending time looking through the list of autocomplete suggestions is often enough to lose track of some of the things I had mentally stacked up to write. Switching to a browser to find docs risks the whole stack.

One way I've found to mitigate this is to not try to write things that that would definitely work on the first draft. Instead, whenever I need something I don't remember, I just write enough of it to note what I'm trying to do and keep going. The details of whether it would be more convenient to use slice or substring here aren't important when I'm trying to write things down before I forget them.

[Jarwain]

I go a step further: I tend to keep tabs open for pages that I know I will be referencing frequently. I trade mental RAM for physical RAM

[PorterDuff]

"First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, then you forget all that shit and just play."

- Famous sax guy