[mikeocool]

I think the first time I was asked for a code sample, I didn't have anything specifically ready. I found the idea of sending a piece of code that was part of a larger application and didn't really function outside of it a little weird. I ended up taking some time to build a little command line script that used a few of the classes I had written and provided that as a sample.

Now that I'm on the hiring end, I've been ask for a sample from candidates, but I'm starting to find them not all that helpful. I've gotten a ton of model classes that are pulled out of Rails or Django apps. Which is fair, if you're building a fairly vanilla app on an MVC web framework, a model is probably one the more self contained pieces, but I think it's really hard to judge a candidate by them.

Ultimately, I've found a much better way to get a feel for how someone codes is to have them come in and pair with them for an hour or two. First spend some time showing them the codebase at a high level and work with them on a really quick problem to see if they get the basics, and if they do, dive into something a little more substantive. Has the nice side effect of seeing if you're going to get along.