If you can ace a 1 hour coding interview without any preparation then more power to you! But many of us have to spend months doing practice problems to perform well in that 1 hour interview. I’ve heard many stories of people doing hundreds of practice problems to pass these kinds of interviews.
I’d much rather dedicate a weekend to solve a take home challenge using technologies I already know than dedicate many months to learn a set of algorithms I would rarely use.
I make a point of never doing "projects" during a recruitment process. The fact is that there are too many good opportunities out there that will not require me two spend a full day or even several days in a week to complete a job application, without compensation. Whenever I hear that there is a "project" to complete, I just tell them that I already have tons of projects to work on and pass the "opportunity".
I’d much rather dedicate a weekend to solve a take home challenge using technologies I already know than dedicate many months to learn a set of algorithms I would rarely use.