I don't disagree with you, but my problem with short coding tests is that they're often very, very contrived. The kind of contrived that it is extremely likely

I don't disagree with you, but my problem with short coding tests is that they're often very, very contrived. The kind of contrived that it is extremely likely that it will be something I have zero experience with in my day-to-day work. It's extremely difficult to find a coding challenge that hits all the points you mentioned. At my current company, we have several problems that we choose between, depending on the skill level of the candidate. But even after interviewing over a hundred candidates, I still feel like none of us get half the information we think we're getting. I don't have any answers, but I don't think your plan of attack is necessarily any better than the author's.