You'd better tread carefully, because this thread is laced with carefully polished dialogue by arch punsters, leather you believe it or not. Sock it to 'em.

A short test might be in order to see if the candidate *understands* the code he writes on the target platform. Here are two suggestions, a subset of a C# quiz which has helped separate the men from the boys in the past. Even if C# is not your language, this might give you some ideas. 1) Show a short loop beginning: "foreach(CustomObject currentObject in objectList)..." Q: What interface must CustomObject implement for this code to work? A: IEnumerable. 2) Similarly: "using(ClientEntity client = new ClientEntity())..." Q:What interface must ClientEntity implement for this code to work? A: IDisposible. You'd be surprised how many candidates with impressive-looking resumes could not answer such questions.

Having both taught computer programming and done it for a living, I find that comments serve two distinct purposes. In the classroom, a comment explains "here is what this code does"; because, when teaching, you introduce an idea and then you explain it. It is appropriate to put such comments immediately following the line of code, but only for didactic purposes. In the production world, a comment explains "here is what this code is for"; and should go above the code (or, if very brief, next to it).