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That's what I try to do when interviewing programmers. I never make anyone write code, I want to know how they think, what did they pay attention to, and what d

• MCRed 11y ago
  Yep. There's nothing wrong with presenting them with a problem and asking how they would solve it, and giving them constraints as they go. Making them write code is much more challenging because it brings up things irrelevant to their ability to think.... but talking to them about it works because they don't have to break the verbal mindset they are already in.
• meatysnapper 11y ago
  I think this approach is great. It will get you people like me who are passionate about software and building cool things, and in general I feel like these are the people I want to work with. If you have no emotion about things you've worked on, that's a bad thing I think. Any silly coding or whiteboard question I ask is a poor substitute for asking someone to talk about the years someone has spent writing software. Where this breaks down is in a big company where you just need to hire bodies, and you you already have a few top-notch engineers who can build great things and direct the unthinking, uninspired masses. At this point, you don't even care about a person's github, because it's too much time to go look through it, and that's too bad.