[starkfist]

Any programmer worth hiring has time to put together 200-500 lines of example code.

[hugh3]

Yeah, I think ideally any code sample they ask for should be something that any programmer competent for the position would be able to bang out in an hour. A twelve-hour project is unfair on the potential interviewee, but an hour is what you'd probably spend in travel time to an interview anyway.

[tomjen3]

That would depend widely on what the code is supposed to do, how long it takes to set up the things my software should work with, etc, etc.

In short, writing the code might not take that long, but all the other things you have to do would.