Prominent figures

The more experienced you get at programming with a specific language and/or framework, the more likely you will get stuck in a pattern of solving problems in the same way over and over again. The odds are that other people may have figured out better ways to solve the same problem, and someone, somewhere, must be talking about it. You should at least observe the community even if you don't participate in it yourself.

One of the best ways to follow the community is to follow the prominent figures in it. For example, for Swift, it is a great idea to follow Chris Lattner, the original creator of Swift. While numerous people now develop Swift, he spent more than a year as the sole developer and continues to run the Developer Tools department at Apple. You can follow him on Twitter at @clattner_llvm, and it can also be useful for you to follow his activity on Apple's developer forums at https://devforums.apple.com/people/ChrisLattner. You can click on the Email Updates...