Why is a starter project so important that it needs to be provided by the company and why in the language of choice of the candidate? How long does it take for you to setup a starter project?
When I solved the challenge that we give our applicants it took me about 5 seconds to setup the project with everything I needed to solve the challenge. In any language I use it does not take long at all to setup a new project. Especially small ones like that.
It depends on the language/framework you're using, something Rails would be very easy to get up and running, but something like a modern Javascript app SSR or Webpack, Babel, etc. might be very time consuming.
My point is your project should be a test of someone's actual development/programming ability, not project setup. You don't want to have people spend an hour configuring CMake or webpack.
The thing is though that we don't have the ability to setup starter projects for any language that anyone might use.
For one thing because we don't know every language and every type of project you might use. For instance I don't think we have anyone that could setup a JavaScript SSR app. I certainly have no idea how that works. I am not a JavaScript developer. If you want to solve our challenge that way then you are certainly welcome to do so, but in that case you would need to set it up yourself. If setting up a JavaScript SSR is time consuming or a major hurdle to you then maybe use something else? If we where providing starter projects JavaScript SSR wouldn't be one we would offer anyways.
CMake isn't that much to set up for simple projects if you know CMake.
I personally think it is fair to include project setup in this test, because it will show me how well you understand the tools you use.
When I solved the challenge that we give our applicants it took me about 5 seconds to setup the project with everything I needed to solve the challenge. In any language I use it does not take long at all to setup a new project. Especially small ones like that.