I had a pleasant interview experience one time, that avoided a number of those problems. I was asked to bring in my laptop with some code I had written. I did,

I had a pleasant interview experience one time, that avoided a number of those problems. I was asked to bring in my laptop with some code I had written. I did, we talked about it. The interviewer asked me to add a simple feature. It's code I was familiar with (as you would be after working for a company for a bit). So no stress. No gotchas. No time wasted with yet another technical test with a throwaway app. Setting up a new project is always a bit of a faff. Admittedly not everyone will have some code ready, but then a normal take home test would be the fallback.