How many of us spent the first day of our programming jobs actually programming? I don't see how they would expect to see somebody in their element with a brand

How many of us spent the first day of our programming jobs actually programming? I don't see how they would expect to see somebody in their element with a brand new code base, new development environment etc. And if the remedy to that is to give them coding problems in a contained environment in which they don't need to have a git account/dev server login/etc., then what makes this different from a normal coding interview?