That approach might work best when hiring a solo contractor to write the firmware for an outer space probe. In my line of work, we operate in sizable teams, an

That approach might work best when hiring a solo contractor to write the firmware for an outer space probe. In my line of work, we operate in sizable teams, and write software that evolves continuously over several years. Under such circumstances, factors other than being able to solve a coding problem in isolation inevitably come into play. Another concern is that we don't want to hire somebody just for being able to solve today's problems, today, but somebody we expect to solve, down the line, problems we don't even know exist yet. Learning styles matter in that context. That said, the concerns you and others in this thread have raised about the subjectivity of evaluating answers to such a question are not without merit. But now that I'm asking more coding questions, I would argue that there is plenty of subjectivity in evaluating the answers to those as well.