Looking up documentation is normal. If not, we wouldn't have the manual pages in Unix and such an emphasis on documentation in ecosystems like Lisp, Go, Python, Perl,... We even have cheatsheets and syntax references books because it's just so easy to forget the /basics/.

I said notetaking, but it's more about building your own index. In $WORK projects, I mostly use the browser bookmarks, the ticket system, the PR description and commits to contextually note things. In personal projects, I have an org-mode file (or a basic text file) and a lot of TODO comments.

And all that take rote mechanical work. Which can quickly lead to fractured focus and now suddenly I'm pulled out of my flow.

Or I can farm that stuff to an LLM, stay in my flow, and iterate at a speed that feels good.

It is very hard to explain the extent of it to a person who did not experience it, really.

I have over a decade of experience, I do this stuff daily, I don't think I can write a 10 line bash/python/js script without looking up the docs at least a couple times.

I understand exactly what I need to write, but exact form eludes my brain, so this Levenshtein-distance-on-drugs machine that can parse my rambling + surrounding context into valid syntax for what I need right at that time is invaluable and I would even go as far as saying life changing.

I understand and hold high level concepts alright, I know where stuff is in my codebase, I understand how it all works down to very low levels, but the minutea of development is very hard due to how my memory works (and has always worked).