[shawnz]

Here's Jeff Atwood's take on it: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-softwa...

"I think you can tell a competent software developer from an incompetent one with a single interview question: 'What's the worst code you've seen recently?' If their answer isn't immediately and without any hesitation [the] two words 'My own.' then you should end the interview immediately."

[pyre]

That's a poor way to judge. I'm always looking at my code and thinking that it's not good enough, but there are definitely pieces of code that are worse that I deal with daily (I work on a code base that's > 20 years old).

[shawnz]

It's a poor way to judge code, yeah, but the more important thing it speaks to, IMO, is the respect the developer has for the fact that other people will actually be executing the code they write.

[pyre]

So if I've recently seen code that is subjectively worse than the worse code I've ever written and I answer that question honestly, the interview will immediately end? That seems like a poor way to judge a developer.