[kafkaesq]

Good call. The sheer idiocy of expecting people to show off their mad hacking skills in such an obviously crippled environment is just... breathtaking. Especially when the cost of renting a session on one of the services that does offer a full-featured IDE (with vi and emacs modes) is close to zero.

But given that it's most likely the result of junior hiring managers giving marching orders to junior engineers (i.e. the people conducting the screening) who just don't know any better than to say "no" to such a silly and insulting request to make of incoming candidates... the depth and reach of this annoying fad becomes less surprising.

[jstimpfle]

This is really misguided. As a programmer you should be able to write a few lines of code in a Google Document.

On the other hand it would be idiotic to expect people to be able to code in IDE XYZ (whether it has vi and emacs mode or not).

[fail2fail2ban]

I've written code for pay for over two decades in a variety of languages and on a variety of platforms. I can say if I don't wish to write code into a Google Document, nothing misguided about that. Someone fresh out of school, maybe, even then, most coders are using an IDE all day or have another window or terminal open so we can do a quick compile sanity check so even for a new coder fresh out of school, this makes no sense.

[kafkaesq]

You should be able to write code with half-busted crayons on the back of yesterday's newspaper, also. But it's much classier (and time-efficient) for all concerned if the employer provides at least ballpark-adequate tools upfront (meaning at the very least an editor that doesn't overtly work against you -- like Google Docs does).