Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

Memory is the basis of knowledge.

The only reason I can see is if you think memorization could be a shortcut to good taste, which it can't. Acquiring good taste requires broad experience—more information than you can possibly remember—such that you retain a suite of sophisticated intuitions. Cutting that information down to something that can be memorized would require you to (1) already have the intuitions you're seeking to acquire, and (2) be able to express them all in plain English, which, as far as I know, cannot be done. No painter has ever expressed their aesthetic in such a way that a student could memorize that expression and then have the same creative sensibilities as the original painter.

Ultimately, there's no substitute for the process of simply consuming lots of art while paying close attention to what you like about it.

1) I've often found these heuristics from books/online/mentors and just had to memorize instead of create them

2) In my own experience heuristic creation has been less of a bottleneck than committing to memory

But it is certainly a key piece of info to have

Of course it is. It's how every human child learns initially. By rote memorization. How does a toddler learn how to say mama? By constantly hearing and repeating it. How does a kid learn their ABCs? Rote memorization is the basis of all memory.

> Memorization in programming gives us architecture astronauts and design-pattern soup rather than elegant code.

Dumbest thing I've ever read. You write programs well by doing and remembering. Same with writing. Memorization is the necessary component to programming well. In other words, you program well by remembering elegant code.

> For me, at least, trying to memorize something without context

After the basics, most memorization is contextual.

> At the same time, memorization has a real cost: it takes time and it's frightfully dull.

Oh dear. Something isn't fun all the time. What a childish worldview. It's more fun to eat candy and drink soda than eating 'dull'. It's more fun to sit and watch youtube than to workout.

> Sometimes a bit of memorization is unavoidable, but I've found that to be relatively rare.

Relatively rare? In order to be competent in anything, you have to memorize lots. You can't write a good essay without having memorized much of the material. Trying reading a book where you have to constantly look up definitions of words because you lack the vocabulary. Try having a conversation with someone who has to constantly look up words because he lacks the vocabulary. Try having code review with someone who doesn't remember anything about their code.

> Otherwise, my time is generally better spent on some sort of practice in context.

Why? Because it helps you remember?

To the idiot ( probably OP ) who downvoted, try coding without having 'memorized' the keyboard. The anti-intellectual, anti-hard work, anti-memorization agenda pushed by some 'people' online bears looking into.