Comment by koliber

Each one of us has a mental toolbox that we use to solve problems. There are many more tools that we don’t have in our heads that we can look up if we know how.

The bigger your mental toolbox the more effective you will be at solving the problems. Looking up a tool and learning just enough to use it JIT is much slower than using a handy tool that you already masterfully know how to use.

This is as true for physical tools as for programming concepts like algorithms and data structures. In the worst case you won’t even know to look for a tool and will use whatever is handy, like the proverbial hammer.