This is not a good analogy. Anyone can identify "a programmer". Identifying "the best programmers", or "the best lions" (in some respect) is an entirely different matter.

make it "I can ID a good baker without being able to make a wild-fermented bread myself" then. In any case, it's a proof of the pudding is in the eating thing: good programmers are defined as programmers that make good software, and good software is software that pleases users and provides functionality that they want. You don't need to be a programmer to know whether the software you're using is consistently good across its lifecycle. If it's bad at the outset it's bad at the outset and if it's not built maintainably and extensibly it will become bad over the course of its lifetime.