> But still, there must be one project that the candidate considers his best work, one he/she is proud of, one where he/she has motivation to do best. Were I t

> But still, there must be one project that the candidate considers his best work, one he/she is proud of, one where he/she has motivation to do best. Were I to have such a project that I could show to people, it would be for a company that I had founded and as such despite my having the ability to show it, I would have absolutely no incentive to do so. Basically if I had EXACTLY everything you purport to want in an employee I would be entirely unmanageable. Someone who has not only the skill and ability to turn out such a project but the motivation to do so on their own time is probably the definition of a founder. And founders are often terrible employees. So while you're right that it would theoretically be better for candidates to share their codebases with potential employers, in practice I suspect that it rarely happens.