This is totally not the reason why experienced programmers fail at coding interviews. There are 3, IMO:

1) Coding interviews unrelated to the job (ex algorithms when the day-to-day job is understanding the DOM and CSS)

2) Coding interviews too specific to the job (ex how would you handle this specific problem you'd probably never see anywhere else)

3) Interviewers either too steeped in orthodoxy to recognize the validity of unorthodox solutions or too unmoored from the idea of best practice to see the validity of a solid solution rooted in best practice.