As a non-traditional programming language fan, I'd love to see candidates throwing up working solutions or providing code samples in any language they choose.

As a non-traditional programming language fan, I'd love to see candidates throwing up working solutions or providing code samples in any language they choose. My co-workers, though, are a little more stuck in traditional thinking on this topic. Also, a number of them are programmers "by accident" and so have maybe picked up one or two imperative programming languages. Simply saying 'Haskell' or 'Lisp' or maybe even 'node.js' would make it impossible for them to make any kind of judgement on a candidate. You probably wouldn't even get an interview, but we are also fronted by a HR machine with a frightening array of check-boxes to navigate through.