>> No one's asking for a masterpiece, just a demonstration of basic competence. Once the candidate demonstrates the basic competence, what would be a good next

>> No one's asking for a masterpiece, just a demonstration of basic competence. Once the candidate demonstrates the basic competence, what would be a good next step? How should one evaluate the higher level of thinking like creativity, (higher-level) problem solving, etc., which may be just as important for the position at hand as the basic competence? If you do have a good answer to the above, the next question could be if you could have tested this higher-level thinking without the basic coding competence if (and only if) so were the nature of the job.