Ability requires memory, at least for basic things.
You can't be a good programmer and forget the syntax of the language you are working in. If you need to look up something as fundamental as switch statement in the internet, it's like a writer looking up words in the dictionary before writing them down in his novel.
I think switch is a particularly bad example here. Honestly, I can't (accurately) tell you the last time I used one. It's not an every-day construct for a lot of people.
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Sure, but we're talking about testing ability vs. memory - switch is incidental.
Ability requires memory, at least for basic things.
You can't be a good programmer and forget the syntax of the language you are working in. If you need to look up something as fundamental as switch statement in the internet, it's like a writer looking up words in the dictionary before writing them down in his novel.
Writers very frequently use the dictionary. There is no problem with it, that's why we have dictionaries.
Not for scrabble disputes?
I think switch is a particularly bad example here. Honestly, I can't (accurately) tell you the last time I used one. It's not an every-day construct for a lot of people.
Neither Python nor Haskell have it - as far as I know. Perhaps you can create one out of monads though.
Actually, case is built into Haskell: it's the evaluation primitive in Haskell Core; see Don Stewart's blog post http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2008/05/16 .
Yes, there it is. Sorry, I did not research my claim.
Actually pattern matching can also be described as something like a case-switch.