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I'm not sure you'd be able to distinguish ChatGPT's output once somebody who actually knows how to properly do software engineering and how to structure a codebase and write code would go through it.

ChatGPT is a really good junior programmer who can write basic functions per best practices, and when it makes a mistake or does something weird, a senior SWE will spot it, and can fix it with much less mental effort than writing the function.

Yeah for that you're better off using one of the live-coding platforms rather than take home, but my point stands -- mostly this is just the trash-can test. "What would you do if I asked you to get me that trash can?" - if your response is to go off on job roles and responsibilities, call janitorial whatever, those are fine responses -- but the winner? They just go get you a trash can.

Job's are not a popularity contest - it's about if you'll do what's asked of you, or if you'll spend more time arguing about the right way to code something rather than solving the business need -- and for my purposes, I need the business problems solved, not someone who gets self-righteous when asked to show an example of them working when applying for, ya know, work.

> as your hiring manager, I don't have the time to tell you you won't have access to most of the ones you're familiar with

You don't have time to explain the job requirements or stack?

I have zero interest in arguing with a candidate who, when asked to implement bubble sort argues the requirements instead of the implementation. I have NDA's that may preclude me from telling you the details of the stack you'll be working on. The job listing should reasonably describe the environment (embedded, data warehousing, frontend, whatever). You're being asked to implement something super basic to prove you can code yourself out of a wet paper bag basically.

Many cannot, and those that argue the premise don't even get a chance to try.

If you think you're being evaluated on your knowledge of the stdlib's sort(), you misunderstand the purpose. You're being tested not because you can hit compile and it passes, but you're being tested on if you're able to follow directions, work within scope, solve problems and explain your thinking. If your thinking stops at "I'd never do that", so does mine.

Someone who complains is for sure a pass.

That applies to any interview test though, you don't need to contrive an absurd scenario to do it.

> would understand the implications of using a library like leftpad and rely solely on trusted functions like isEven instead.

Tangent — how is isEven trusted? It seems people usually categorize leftpad and isEven pretty similarly (e.g. pointless bloat deps waiting to be next supply-chain attack), so I don’t follow the distinction you’re making.

I was absolutely snarking on NPM's collection of libraries - so that pointing to 'libraries exist' isn't necessarily a good point; Stupid libraries exist, expertise is knowing which ones to pick. Both of them would get you laughed out of a code-review in my org.