I know this sounds judgmental, but I would challenge your perception of these "best" programmers. In my experience, truly great programmers only have preference

I know this sounds judgmental, but I would challenge your perception of these "best" programmers. In my experience, truly great programmers only have preferences when it comes to languages. If I have someone voicing very strong preferences or go as far as claiming to "hate" a language as inoffensive as Python, I mentally add them to the "probably middle of the road programmers, needs ego management".