Largely depends why you ask? I get the impression that most people have taken this to be a pass fail type question in an interview and that’s where the contention is coming from.

My interviews are conversations to get to know you, your background, your professional interests, how you think about problems and how closely your resume lines up with those conversations. I like to get people talking about their work to see where their energy level goes.

When we start talking through a hypothetical data problem there are people who will describe the problem from the UX perspective, the app code perspective and the database perspective. The question prompts that portion of the conversation.