That said, I'm curious how you could talk to someone about programming for four years and at the end of that 9 out of 10 of them could not actually do it.
I honestly don't know how it happens. She clearly wasn't an idiot, and she certainly learned a lot of theory but couldn't program her way out of a paper bag. And this was not for an entry level position, either.
How can you get all the way through a PhD program without even encountering the concept of rebooting a computer?!
Out of a class of 35 students who were already in their 2nd, 3rd or 4th term of this program, no one knew to press F12 to see the console in a browser. This was a web development program. I basically had to teach these kids as if they just walked off the street. No matter which new batch of kids I had, it was like this. I asked them how they could know so little about anything development wise if they took 4 years of CS, like literally what did they do. They'd always just answer that they learned "Theory" and something about learning out of a book, not actually developing or anything.
I still didn't understand how 4 years of theory or book learning couldn't teach you the most basic programming concepts. I'm pretty sure the schools were just mills or scams or something, it was sad.
Most of the students had no real interest in actually learning how to code or doing any learning either, they seemed to believe that just by showing up they'd pass, get a degree and a good job, which was bizarre, especially in a university town and tech hot bed. The amount of cheating, copying, lying, begging, etc. didn't help. A few folks were genuine, but the program seems like it's just a legal loophole to get into the country where if they get at least a technical support job after 2 years of grad they can legally become citizens. This is the fastest growing and most profitable sector of this college.
I sometimes wonder if they did that by design...
To be fair, I can understand when someone doesn't know that the shortcut key for the dev console is F12, but I would hope they would at least start at the "hamburger" menu to see if they could find it.
Your anecdote reminds me of the dot com days when I was trying to hire some network engineers. Their only qualification appeared to be they passed some certification test on Cisco gear. The only questions they asked about the job were "how much stock will I get?" and "when do you think the company will go public?" It was easy to not hire them, even when we were really in need of people.