Just out of curiosity: who did you hire in final ? The only super geek that knows how to write unmaintainable obscure, and probably undocumented, code or another one that nicely demonstrate how to write a well architectured, easily maintainable application using only the core 20% of java API ? No offense, just curious to know where people think the true value is.

It was not 70+ interviews for just one position. The interviews were done over a few years for several positions. Asking questions like this does not decide the outcome of the interview - unless you have 2 possible candidates that are absolutely equal in knowledge and personality. But it is interesting to see how far their knowledge goes. However, I stopped asking questions like this a while ago because most candidates already fail at more basic java or general development questions. Now-a-days programming seems be taught and treated like, say, plumbing, especially since the demand for cheap developers has risen due to the rise of big outsourcing companies. If you are lucky someone has told them how to do things but very rarely they know why they should do things in a certain way. And if you ask questions that are more about design and logical thinking rather than java technicalities most of the candidates fail catastrophically. At least that is my experience.