[chrisbennet]

Great interview question:

“When you come across poorly written code, do you think:

1. ‘Wow this guy was an idiot or lazy.’

2. ‘Maybe this code looks bad but the author probably wasn’t an idiot. It was probably reasonable solution at the time.’

The 2nd answer is the one of wisdom. Ask the interviewee to expand on this so you can tell if they really believe it.

[partisan]

This is absolutely what you want, but any reasonable interviewee will respond with the answer that seems most likely to lead to an offer.

Instead, ask them about their experiences with legacy code. Not poorly written code, just "legacy". Talk through it with them, their changes, how they planned for them, how they dealt with the code.

This will tell you more than asking a softball question.

[chrisbennet]

Yes, partisan said it much better.