No.12036
Older programmers 40yrs+: recent past performance is a good predictor. A good progammer is known in his community / has worked for high profile companies / projects.
Young programmers: no fuarrrking way to know, some guys look like soykaf at some time and 3 years later are rockstars at Google. It's basically a coin spin
A recruiting company / startup should not look for good programmers, if they are good they are working in a good company already. It should look for programmers that are good enough and focus on a challenging product / project. After sometime they will learn from experience and from each other and grow to become good programmers
That's the theory anyway..