What is "production-level code"? [closed]

Question

This isn't quite a technical question, but I've noticed a lot of job postings that ask for experience writing production level code. I've been assuming that this is just opposed to, for instance, testing code. What, specifically, does the term "production-level code" mean?

Answer 1

Production level code has many attributes that example code or code from throwaway projects would not have. Such as

• error handling
• edge case condition handling
• portable to multiple platforms
• well thought out naming of variables, functions, methods, classes, parameters etc
• testability
• documentation
• optimizations for code space or speed
• user interface considerations

as opposed to many text book examples which state things like "error handling not shown for simplicity".

Answer 2

It's to signify the difference between code you might write at university/school/for fun and code you write for money; mostly just attention to detail but the change is noticeable.

Answer 3

It means that the company recently hired someone who wrote garbage and that they're trying to keep it from happening again.

Answer 4

Often 'production-level code' can mean your ability to use software development tools such as source code control or testing/validation as opposed to a student who has often only used an IDE or command line tools for small projects.

Answer 5

If someone asked me in an interview about "production level code", I would reference projects based on my current/past job experience. This would be projects for companies that are detailed on my resume. This could also include CodePlex or other similar projects where a stable working build has been released for consumption by other people.

I wouldn't talk about demos, proof-of-concepts, etc., etc...I would talk about projects that were written, deployed and used by someone else.