If your point is that the author presented an interview vignette where the "Me", interviewee, character reacted to an unpleasant situation with less grace and courtesy than ideal, I doubt anyone would disagree. It was likely also just for emphasis and not to be taken literally, as it wasn't core to the point of the article.
It's not that the interviewee merely didn't want to perform the exercise. It's that he questioned (or rejected) the premise of needing to do it that way. In the context of the interview, what would it show?
There are plenty of people who very much want to work with someone who will question and even push back on "going off the reservation" (as a comment up-thread put it).
It shows a willful stubbornness that is incredibly difficult to work with. Obviously I'm not asking you the question because I'm a masochist -- I'm asking it because I'm trying to glean something about your abilities. The fact that the author would rather flaunt their ego as a "real developer" than suspend disbelief for a few minutes marks them as unnecessarily argumentative in my mind.
So what you're saying is that you don't believe the GP because you come to a particular conclusion as to the signal that such a reaction in the interview sends about the character of the candidate?
Are you asserting it's impossible (for reasonable person) to come to any different conclusion as to the signal that it sends?
As compared with the author's suggested alternative, do you feel that asking such a question is a better way of determining both this signal and the something about the candidate's abilities you were hoping to discover?
