[mortivore]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure what the point of take home projects like that is. Like my first instinct for something like this is to Google it. Guess what happens when I do google "chat server in golang"? I get a bunch of examples. So do I just copy them/strip them down/combine the examples or do I try to code this thing from scratch with no examples? Guess which I would do in an actual job?

No, you're not a shitty dev. I'm sure given enough time you would have gotten it. Take home projects are weird. They are better than the whiteboarding imo, but only barely.