I've found that the really good programmers are the ones that love to program. A good way to find this out is to have them give you a list of programming books they have at home, if they give you a list that are not college books you know their spending time on their own learning new things. You could also ask them the web site's they visit... of course if they answer with codeproject.com they must be a good programmer.

Terence Dwyer