We played a memory game at school once where everyone sat in a circle and said their favourite activity. For years and years after I could remember the entire sequence. I could probably regurgitate the whole thing now if I had a few hints. Another one that works short term for exams and such is 'definitions , lists and diagrams.' On left page of notebook write say 'definition of Agile development' followed by a dash for each point on the agile manifesto, followed by 'diagram of [something agile related. Textbooks always have diagrams]. ' on the right page write the actual definition, followed by the actual list, followed by the actual diagram, but use your own words, not the textbook's. Glance over it, then cover it with a piece of paper and write the entire thing out again from memory. No peaking but at least you can count how many list items are required from the other page. Check you got it right, reread any mistakes, and then you'll find that after having written it out twice you can easily remember the whole thing when the exam comes. I find any sort of thoughtful reinforcement makes memory very effective.

I wanted to ask though, do you guys memorise APIs and keywords and other programming mattered, rather than just picking up or looking up as you go? Does it help you program much faster? Of course it's a lot to remember considering all the rules and contexts and parameters.