I disagree with the assertion that solving a coding question on a whiteboard is equivalent to asking a surgeon what a scalpel is. The equivalent for an engineer would be asking what an if statement is. Both are simple tools that are used for your job, and interviews should assume you know what they are.

The real equivalent for a surgeon would be to give him a theoretical case of a patient and then ask him to explain how he would solve it. I'm not a surgeon so I have no clue what their interviews are really like, but asking a question like this would seem like a very reasonable thing to do.

As for the guy in the article who whines about employers stubbornly wanting someone who has written code sometime recently, I'm not quite sure why he'd think otherwise. When you hire someone at a PhD's salary you generally don't expect to have to hold their hand for a few months as they get back into learning how to write code. Not to mention anyone I know who is good at writing code writes code for fun in their free time. Would you hire an artist who has a Fine Art degree but hasn't actually drawn anything for years? I think not.