In my experiences this is generally not true, bad programmers cannot talk the talk. I've found the problem is sometimes missing good candidates because that pa

In my experiences this is generally not true, bad programmers cannot talk the talk. I've found the problem is sometimes missing good candidates because that particular one found you intimidating in some way. You can try to mitigate this some by having multiple interviewers to try to find someone on your team they can relate to. But really even this tends to work in your favor, because if they don't click with anyone on your team they probably won't do well even if they are good.