Probably my favourite open-ended interview topic for programmers is asking them to rank various properties code might have in order of importance, and explain why they chose the order they did.

For example, one possible list of properties might be conciseness, correctness, documentation, efficiency, maintainability, portability, readability, and testability.

Often, I can learn a great deal about what sort of person I’m talking to just by watching them define their terms, decide what assumptions they think are necessary, and then reason through the resulting dependencies.

I get the feeling that the parent posters (hercynium and catnaroek) might argue for quite different orders, but both with good reasons.