[bulatb]

The very short version:

Probably ignore that person.

The short version:

Reading charitably, what they meant is that they're looking for people with open-ended problem-solving skills. They're confident in your ability to, as you say, solve specific problems whose form is well understood: writing a controller, connecting APIs, and so on. What they're more concerned about is whether, if you had to, you could reproduce that API or write that framework from scratch, design and all.

In other words, they're looking for a person whose skill is "fix a broken car," not "fix the power steering on a 2015 Honda Civic." Maybe they don't have a Honda Civic. :)

The oops-not-long version:

Though it's possible to make a technical distinction between programming and "scripting," people who insist on making it are often doing that for social reasons (which is why I jumped to probably ignore them). I don't know if going into detail would be helpful, so I'll actually stop there.

[archlight]

I see people who has CS background like to talk about performance, go deep into the subject. the common question asked how python list implemented. I reply variable array and interviewer is happy. To be honest i haven't noticed list has to resize when appending more items. probably i haven't seen real world problem.

I think there is some special code unknown to outside developer league that they can test and know you are real developer