I don't understand why is there such a strong emphasis on these kind of interview questions. I think showing a piece of nontrivial code which the candidate have

I don't understand why is there such a strong emphasis on these kind of interview questions. I think showing a piece of nontrivial code which the candidate have created in the past tells a lot more about the candidate. For example this tells more about me than the interview questions I usually got: http://codeclamp.com/ccui.js http://codeclamp.com/ccui.js , because it tells about how I think long-term, how I solve relatively hard and relatively complex problems, not how I survive a quick interview (solving relatively easy algorithmical problems but under very high time pressure.). (By the way, if you have an interesting well paying job for me, I might be interested...)