Latest trend? Haven't we all gone through this before? Back in 2012 I did a "homework assignment" too, just to get an interview with a game studio. The task? Build a SOAP client and server that do some silly little thing, I don't even remember what. Basically, just something to prove competency. It took about an hour, mostly time I spent reading the manual for the programming language they requested. Trivial shit... WTF are people being assigned that takes multiple days? Ridiculous...