If you have a CS degree and cannot answer this type of question in your language of choice, you simply aren't ready for even a junior position in my opinion.
This type of coding exercise can potentially answer more questions about the candidate in two minutes than 30 minutes of softball questions about the candidate's past experiences.
I think that people who disagree simply haven't done much interviewing or haven't worked on a team with someone who couldn't do much more than copy/paste code from SO.
> I think that people who disagree simply haven't done much interviewing
Absolutely. Last time I went through trying to hire people was about a year ago. Easily 90% of the applicants we saw were completely unqualified. You have to have a way to weed them out.
Because there are people applying for software engineering jobs that still can't answer those questions.