Show me your code!

Interviewing Web Developers - Good Questions to Ask

(Continued from previous question...)

11. Show me your code!

Whether it's plain old HTML or freakishly advanced ruby on rails, ask for code samples. Source code can say more about a persons work habits than you think. Clean, elegant code can often be indicative of a methodical, capable developer. A resume may say 7+ years of perl experience, but that could mean 7 years of bad, unreadable perl. Also, make sure you ask for a lot of source code, not just a few isolated functions or pieces of HTML. Anyone can clean up 20-30 lines of code for an interview, you want to see the whole shebang. Don't ask for a full, functional app, but make sure it's enough that you can tell it's really what their code is like.

(Continued on next question...)

Other Interview Questions

• What industry sites and blogs do you read regularly?
• Do you prefer to work alone or on a team?
• How comfortable are you with writing HTML entirely by hand? (+exercise)
• What is the w3c?
• Can you write table-less XHTML? Do you validate your code?
• What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?
• Describe/demonstrate your level of competence in a *nix shell environment
• What skills and technologies are you the most interested in improving upon or learning?
• Show me your portfolio!
• What sized websites have you worked on in the past?
• Show me your code!
• What are a few sites you admire and why? (from a webdev perspective)
• Fix this code, please.
• I just pulled up the website you built and the browser is displaying a blank page. Walk me through the steps you'd take to troubleshoot the problem.
• What's your favorite development language and why? What other features (if any) do you wish you could add to this language?
• Do you find any particular languages or technologies intimidating?
• Acronym time (oh boy!)
• What web browser do you use?
• What are a few personal web projects you've got going on?.