For a typical whiteboard coding problem, I also wouldn't want to see 60+ commits.
I remember later on I wrote a script that listened to git hooks and rebuilt my project on a remote server. I was still testing manually at that time, as we all do in the beginning, which resulted in a large number of commits so that I could view the results on the server.
I think it's ok to ask "why do you have so many commits?" but not "why do you have so many commits?!?!?!". It's also not ok to ASSUME that a large number of commits is a bad thing automatically, unless you have reasons far better then any submitted in this thread.
But there were about 16 files in total. All of the comparators that were written had multiple tests. (I shot for nearly 100% coverage..although I wasn't going to force stdin emulation, and mock out system.exits) All of the commits that were performed were done in small amounts. (Also, a few were just for transferring work space to other computers) The task in hand would have represented approximately 4 tickets at the bare minimum.
Besides, the number of commits: That problem is resolved by merging a branch back down.
The feedback was written in a way "How do you consider that reasonable in a professional environment?"
(Another thing... I wasn't required to submit via a git repo I was required to submit via a zip file, but I did because I hoped it'd give me a leg up.... Turns out: You're better off not trying)
