It works for literature reasonably well. Start with somebody you really like, and see who they wrote critiques and reviews for, who they wrote letters to most frequently, and who they admired or otherwise aspired to be more like.

Works for software, too. What’s new is old, and the old stuff is often quite good.

There’s a lot of stuff that was way “ahead of its time”, to borrow an aphorism, but nobody knows this because it hasn’t been “rediscovered”, to borrow another.