[pcthrowaway]

I thought it was pretty clear from my post... my memory is much worse than it was in my 20s (and I have <10 years of professional experience). A 20-something with 10 years of experience is going to remember the things they solved in those 10 years (or they are much more likely to anyway). I might remember that I solved it once, but the details of how are entirely elusive.

[airbreather]

OK, I just don't remember anything like that at 30, if anything I was just coming into my own

Is it actual capacity of memory, or amount of information required on tap so much higher?

At age 35 there was not quite mobile phones as common items, and I could rememebr 200+ landline numbers off the top of my head, people used to call out to me for them across the room.

[pcthrowaway]

I have to document the shit out of everything I work on so that if I come back to it 3 days later I can remember what the hell this component/module/api is supposed to do.

In my mid-to-late 20s when I started programming professionally I didn't have the experience to know how important thorough documentation was, but it didn't cause problems for me because I could generally just remember all the things I had worked on.