True - and there's certainly a line to be drawn between core knowledge and wider knowledge. A programmer, looking up what an if-statement is each time won't do

True - and there's certainly a line to be drawn between core knowledge and wider knowledge. A programmer, looking up what an if-statement is each time won't do well, regardless of the resources at their disposal. But I'd argue that realistic test conditions correct for this automatically. If your test is "write a program that does X within two hours" the programmer lacking core knowledge will fail. If your test is "recite 20 programming paradigms from memory" you will have to check for "cheating"