> "in my days, we had books and we remembered things" which of course is hilarious because today you can't possibly retain ALL the knowledge needed to be software engineer

Reading books was never about knowledge. It was about knowhow. You didn't need to read all the books. Just some. I don't know how many developers I met who would keep asking questions that would be obvious to anyone who had read the book. They never got the big picture and just wasted everyone's time, including their own.

"To know everything, you must first know one thing."