In a similar vein, my favourite interview (and actually the one that scored me my first real gig) was explaining existing code in some of the products that I would be working on if I got the position.
That way I had not seen the code before, but at the same time this was for real, "live" code. It was awesome, as not only did I get to show I could understand code, but more importantly it showed that I was able to dive into an already existing project and work through what I needed to.
It also gave me a little insight into how those projects were organised, in a way.
I think in all, I was given 5 snippets, all getting 'harder'. The way it worked was the first snippet was a complete function, comments included. That allowed me to infer things from the comments, as well as function and parameter names. By the end, they were showing code with the function name changed and all comments removed, but the rest was still there.
I thought that whole process was quite interesting and having lead some interviews myself since then, I always ensure that I try that with the hires we are looking at...
That way I had not seen the code before, but at the same time this was for real, "live" code. It was awesome, as not only did I get to show I could understand code, but more importantly it showed that I was able to dive into an already existing project and work through what I needed to.
It also gave me a little insight into how those projects were organised, in a way.
I think in all, I was given 5 snippets, all getting 'harder'. The way it worked was the first snippet was a complete function, comments included. That allowed me to infer things from the comments, as well as function and parameter names. By the end, they were showing code with the function name changed and all comments removed, but the rest was still there.
I thought that whole process was quite interesting and having lead some interviews myself since then, I always ensure that I try that with the hires we are looking at...