Personally, I wouldn't mind if it was somewhere I wanted to work. Heck, I spend longer than that on the cover letter. When I'm job hunting I'm pretty selective

Personally, I wouldn't mind if it was somewhere I wanted to work. Heck, I spend longer than that on the cover letter. When I'm job hunting I'm pretty selective so I spend a lot of time on just a few job applications (research + cover letter). Requiring code makes makes it more time consuming for less focused job searchers but maybe that is the point?