I think there is a balance to be made between stuff and people. There is value in following a person because you find them particularly interesting, but there is also value in finding content through your interests. I don't see nearly as much #programming as I'd like to in my feed, mostly because the people who post there post a lot of other things, and don't solely focus on programming. It would be ideal to follow #programming for programming specific content, and follow users for more general content that I trust them to share. I'm inclined to be on your side of the tags argument. Let me follow stuff instead of dudes and I'm much more likely to find stuff I'm interested in.
You might be overvaluing how good your feed would look by only following tags, but I see where you're coming from.