I disagree. Applicant should have done more to understand the requirements for the task. That’s a massive part of software engineering, and you would be surprised how much time software engineers will spend solving the wrong problem. He didn’t understand that part of the problem included rolling a novel solution or restricted use of a database. Almost a daily problem for software engineers is extracting this information from customers or systems engineers.

> Good software engineering is about leveraging existing robust tools in a new way, not about re-inventing a wheel while making is square.

Use of external libraries or solutions is often very restrictive (if not banned) in my field. We can use existing internal or known verified solutions. Not everything is so black and white, and not all options are always on the table. They rarely ever are.

I don’t think really think “leveraging existing tools” is a defining part of software engineering... though it certainly is part of it. Software engineering is much more than just coming up with solutions.