I am good at coding. I am a good enough debugger to get through most cases. I am good enough at getting a prototype out. However, if you are looking for someone

I am good at coding. I am a good enough debugger to get through most cases. I am good enough at getting a prototype out. However, if you are looking for someone to sort out some deep and ugly multithreading issues, there are people who are better at it than me. If you are running an agency trying to drum up work, there are people better than me. If you have a codebase with no tests and everyone is afraid to touch it, you want me. If you have three teams that are trying to sort out a problem but nobody will dig in, talk with everyone, and sort out the technical issue, you want me. That’s the difference. Now, as for determining high quality code without having that basis, I would start with Robert Martin’s book “clean code.” At the very least, it can teach the basics of understanding a code sample. However, it can be a difficult problem. I might think about a consultant to judge those and use behavioral interviews to judge the rest.