when and how should programmers be judged on their actual written code?
seasoup: After interviewing someone in person, so that you do not waste their time, have them take some time to program a take home assignment in a language of their choice.  This assignment should take no more then a couple of hours and they should be prepared to discuss why they implemented it in this way, what alternatives there were, and why they did not use them.  Ask them to also write any testing code that would go along with the code, so you can see how they write tests.