Where to Find Good Programmers?

It is always good to learn from good programmers, but where are they? Do they write blogs, join forums or discuss in some mailing lists? It seems to me that most of them do not. The few who do so only write posts or send emails very occassionally. I guess most good programmers are busy with programming in computer languages instead of writing in natural languages, which in fact is why they become good programmers.

In finding good programmers, I have checked quite a few blogs. Most of the bloggers (including me unfortunately) act as good programmers. They are presenting their thoughts on some concepts or quarrelling over what is better. But they do not present source codes, or just give elementary pieces of codes, from which no one can ever tell their abilities. What is the meaning to hear the thought of a bad programmer? If I cannot tell, I would simply ignore their words.

I have also joined comp.lang.c for a few days. It also disappoints me, at least up to now. Again, most people argue over details of concepts or show off their knowledges which I do not think necessary in a lot of cases. A lot of people here like to ignore the central issue and to extend the discussions on mediocre points to nowhere. Few present high-quality source codes and again I do not know who are really good programmers or who are just good lecturers on C. Probably good programmers in this list do not have the time to show their abilities. I need to wait a bit longer.

Then where to find good programmers? I would suggest searching for good codes first and then for the authors behind those codes. Here is an example that how I found a good programmer. I came across jemalloc written by Jason Evans and then I noticed his implementation of red-black tree. Further search brought me to his blog. Only a few posts there but you can quickly know he is a good programmer. I would say his thoughts on programming weight much more than the most emails I have seen on the newsgroup or the blogs I have read there several days. Always remember: before reading one’s thoughts, read his/her codes first.