Imagine being given a problem such as "add any two given integers but do not use math operators".
A person without anything but if/then/else knowledge would proceed to try to write
if (a==1 && b==2) c==3
and repeat it for every variation until they gave up.Someone with more core experience and coding instinct would immediately recognize there must be away to set patterns for 0-9 and then analyze each decimal place, apply a matrix, or a number of other approaches.