They have been coding for quite a while and are saying that they still look up the syntax for case/switch statements, because they cannot remember it off the top of their head. I am in the exact same boat, except with about a third of their experience coding.
I would definitely ding someone and think less of them if they claimed to be a senior engineer but couldn't remember how to write a switch statement in Java/C++. If you have to look things up you work slower and you don't understand nuances of e.g. what types can be used in switch statements in what language which limits your design skills.
