[g8gggu89]

You could certainly do all of those things during a coding test, as much as was appropriate for such small problems. I'm sure that would impress people if you did it competently.

> So coding exams are almost a litmus test for "inexperienced programmer" in my view.

You certainly could call them that when they weed out people with 20 years of experience who can't merge 2 sorted lists.