There is truth in this, but even then, to apply the formulas to many problems, you need to have seriously strong pattern recognition abilities, and the capacity and flexibility to adapt what you know to the given situation. Then piping the right thing into the other right things requires a deeper understanding, not always of what the thing very nature, but at least what it does, and what's it compatible with.

This means loading the entire problem space in your head.

And this is hard.