The single best thing I've done when interviewing is ask people to bring a laptop with some of their code on it. I don't care the language o the framework. I do

The single best thing I've done when interviewing is ask people to bring a laptop with some of their code on it. I don't care the language o the framework. I don't care if it was school, side project, or even their current job. It puts people on their home turf, where they are most confident and comfortable. They can show me what they are proud of. I can ask lots of questions about it and see their thinking without having to be a total dick asking for an esoteric algorithm on a white board. There's also a lot to be said for how well someone know show to use their tools. Are they navigating proficiently, or are they poking around the IDE like they just started out. This sounds like a softball interview, but you would be amazed the number of people it weeds out. You probably need something more rigorous beyond that, but don't start with the hard problems when an easy filter can really give you a lot of insight. (Note that generally you can't share your current job's code, but people are fairly comfortable opening their own laptop and poking around in the code. I never ask for people to send me that kind of code).