Yes, it's important to remember what type of project we're talking about. So my points are in relation to this type of hire. I think some of what I wrote it being taken out of context.



If this is the type of job someone is likely to go after, or other freelance type work, then it's important to have a portfolio of sorts. If someone is in a 9-to-5 then it's not as relevant. For this type of hire, the employer isn't expecting that they will have to further train the employee. When you're contracting someone it's preferable that they hit the ground running, not spending the next 6 months learning Objective-C and how to use Mac OS.



Explaining can only go so far, and not everyone has the ability to explain. Of course if someone lacks that ability I'd also caution to stay away. I have extremely high standards, so it's important for me to see at least some work along with the explanation. I'd also look for someone who is comfortable with architecting good solutions. The second developer that I had working for me, I had to bloody architect everything and almost spoon feed them pseudo code. That was a nightmare. They were fresh out of school and thought $50k wasn't a good starting salary. They didn't even deserve $25k as a competent software engineer should have been able to perform without all the hand-holding and with at least three times the output.



This is being taken out of context. My reply was directly to you having mentioned that someone would be dishonest and steal code to represent it as their own. That's what I was talking about. I'm not talking about using shared/public code where it's appropriate. There's a lot of framework and wrapper re-use in Mac OS development for instance and it's something I really appreciate and encourage - when the solutions are sound.



We're in complete agreement here. The ability to research and know when to use existing code is also of paramount importance, and IMO, a valuable skill to demonstrate.



Again, your situation is different. I was referring to someone out of school. I'm sorry, but if someone has just graduated and all they have to show is a resume referencing a bachelors (or college diploma), then I don't consider that very valuable unless I'm looking specifically for an extremely entry-level person. Not what I'd consider for, nor recommend for, a job like the subject of this thread.

A motivated and passionate coder will have written and designed all manner of projects, big or small, on their own time while at school. I'd rather hire someone who isn't even in school but has simply been writing code on their own with something to show for it. That's the only way you're going to find someone without job experience that does have experience with what you're looking for.

People used to be able to graduate from UofT with a CompSci degree without knowing a single line of C. Certainly without any GUI or Mac/Windows API experience. That stuff just wasn't part of the curriculum, so it was important to do stuff outside to gain some real-world experience, even without being part of the job force. That's where one could see an immediate distinction between a merely competent programmer (by-the-book, a regurgitater ) and an excellent one (a creative, an engineer, an inventor, an artist).