To me, a perfect interview would be: "Here's a coding challenge, go home, write the code to solve this, come back tomorrow and tell me three things: - How you

To me, a perfect interview would be: "Here's a coding challenge, go home, write the code to solve this, come back tomorrow and tell me three things: - How you did it, - Why you pick this solution, - How it could be improved" by doing this I could see how he writes code, if he's just a google copy&paster, and what's his skills in algorithm optimization etc...and specially, how he/she thinks. Quite frankly I don't care if someone doesn't know what Polymorphism is right from his head. I didn't knew what polymorphism was until a few months ago, and yet I was applying the same principles in a lot places in my code. That's the downside of being a self-taught you don't get to know a lot of theory, but on my work I know I'm doing it right. (Also because polymorphism is a very abstract thing to be honest....) In a nutshell, get developers who can show you their code and can it explain it, don't rely on theory, you are not hiring a college professor.