I like questions that bootstrap productive discussions. Showing code might work, but asking to write code is a bad idea. Even simple code can become a nightmare

I like questions that bootstrap productive discussions. Showing code might work, but asking to write code is a bad idea. Even simple code can become a nightmare to write if the person is uncomfortable due to the natural pressure that arises in a technical interview. The best programmers transform themselves while alone, in front of their computers, and there is no way to induce this kind of behavior in an interview. There is no way to get completely "in the zone" there. The best you can do is to read code previously written and talk - a lot. Talk about algorithms and data structures if that's the case, but don't ask the subject to write it down. He is not prepared to. To filter out extremely unskilled candidates, simple questions might suffice: "how many bits does a byte have?", "what's the difference between an array and a linked list?", "what is the difference between GET and POST?", "what is the difference between a function and a macro?", and also more informal questions: "what technologies are you watching lately?", " what fields of computer science you would like to dive more?". These make it very easy to spot people who have no idea of what they are doing. One thing that I have never seen but I suspect it should work is to ask the candidate to write the code days before the interview, and then bring it to discussion in the moment of the interview. In this method, you eliminate the uncomfortable process of writing code in an unusual circumstance but keeps the feature of discussion.