I both agree and disagree with this as many of the other comments took this in a very different way than I had. You can still test for creative ability in the

I both agree and disagree with this as many of the other comments took this in a very different way than I had. You can still test for creative ability in the traditional coding interview construct through systems design questions. It requires you to have a deep understanding of various technologies, but at the same time focuses more on how you view various trade offs which are crucial in designing complex systems. When discussing art with its creator, you could have the same kind of discussions about various tradeoffs they made in regards to various technical topics. For a writer, use of alteration in a certain way, or a photographer trying to draw focus to a certain aspect of the larger photograph, in particular to various editing decisions. The issue here is that the vast majority of new-grads/young programmers are fresh out of school and haven't spent any time focusing on systems design so companies focus on what they know best, asking them to be creative in the domain of algorithms. I also think its the case that since so many people's first interviews were algorithms based the process just continues to be that way. But, at the end of the day, to say choosing a particular data structure to solve a certain type of problem has no creative aspect to it is wrong.