When a biz loses their best coders, what's next for their old code?

[whyterabbyt]

Pretty sure it's better to ask the opinions of successful people...regardless of the topic.

Why? Are successful people within a single company supposed to be the experts on the combined working practices of the other companies within their industry as a whole?
Also; if you're excluding anything outside KVR, what part of plugin development do you think is substantively different in this regard from the rest of the software industry?

[vurt]

Popcorn available?

a firm in manc i worked for, had a pass for the imax top tier, we could use any time we wanted. the top bit includes free nachos with cheese, soft drinks, quality street sweets and of course, salty or sweet popcorn.
if you want booze, you gotta pay!

so yes, in some cases, part of the way companies retain staff, can include popcorn.

I was in Manchester roughly 15 years ago the first time, walked down the city center and saw an advertising for topless trampolining. It was a mentally devastating discovery for a continental boy like I was. Never got this picture out of my head!

i don't know about trampolining, but i remember, probably about 20 years ago "topless hairdressing" became a short lived thing.
was closed down by health and safety, after several women, got trimmed hairs from customers, in pores, which would then become infected.
never saw the attraction myself, but lonely blokes will pay a fortune for anything if you throw some boobs in.
it's a tenner, now for a basic haircut, they were charging 40 back then!!!

[whyterabbyt]

isnt a topless trampoline basically just a small circular fence?

[vurt]

isnt a topless trampoline basically just a small circular fence?

maybe they used to come with a roof?

"these trampolines could be fun, if we could work out how to stop them banging their heads on every bounce??"

"we could take the top off?"

[masterhiggins]

I’d ask applied acoustics how they’re handling it.

[whyterabbyt]

isnt a topless trampoline basically just a small circular fence?

maybe they used to come with a roof?

"these trampolines could be fun, if we could work out how to stop them banging their heads on every bounce??"

"we could take the top off?"

hmm, never thought of that. i suppose the roof helps with when it rains.

[Fannon]

I'm amazed how quickly KVR threads become a "free association game" for many

From a pro quality coders perspective, how hard is it to join and extend someone else's prior work?
What are the main variables that are considered?
Cheers

How hard that is depends on many factors. Just some of them out of my head:

How good is the code quality and structure / architecture of the software, how well is it covered by automated tests and good documentation? If this is really bad, software can become unmanageable (it's usually called technical debt in the field). At some point, changing or extending the code becomes so much effort or high-risk that it will not be worth it to invest anymore. Also it's really hard to get good developers working on this, as they usually can pick projects and mostly prefer to create something new they can shape (until it becomes someone elses problem again ). Working on bad code also is not fun, so you have to pay devs extra to keep them motivated.

Some problem domains / technologies are really complicated and it's hard to find experts who can deal with it. This might be controversial, but there are some hard problems that you cannot give to a mediocre programmers because they would never find a good solution for it or come up with some abomination. I can imagine that DSP belongs to the more difficult side of programming.

Sometime a good project and it's success is mostly due to a single, brilliant person. If that person doesn't share that knowledge and train people, they become really difficult to replace. But if the code quality is OK, the product can live on and have a good live with maintenance and regular feature developments.

Actually, I've seen this play out a few times. The "genius-type" coders usually either found their own product / company or they look for places where they have the freedom to create something new with creative freedom within a company. In the latter case, they might well move on after the creation is done to something new, creative again and leave others to the regular development and maintenance.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yeah, I find asking the question here, specifically, odd and perhaps even a little passive aggressive. There's a whole DSP forum here where other developers hang out and might discuss the problem from a more general perspective.

Imagine someone coming over your house for dinner and asking, "hey, you guys have a successful marriage, how hard is it to keep a marriage going after one of the partners in it has been unfaithful?" That would certainly come across as shit-stirring right? Your question implies that U-he lost their best coders, which I think ignores one Urs Heckman, and could be read to imply that there's lots of old code not getting updated. That definitely comes across as passive aggressive when looked at that way.

[glokraw]

Thankyou Fannon, you have answered my question very well. Hope others will continue the trend!

@funkybot: I'm a consumate U-he fanboi...never had a negative word to say about them. Started out ages ago using ZebraCM in the Fedora linux with CCRMA repository, the Suse 'Jacklab', the first release of Ubuntu Studio, and the Puppy/slackware based Studio 1337, in wine before the 1.0 release, and with reaper 2.x. Currently happily using the linux versions in AVLinux, Puppy Studio, and PCLinuxOS. Always had great support the few times I've asked for it, and the products are world class.

As an analogy, our humble family got their first BMW in 1967. We always went to the same mechanics, german brothers Franz and Warner Salzman, who graced our shores with expert automotive work for decades, no need to consult others.
No...need. Much the same as U-he continue to provide in the audio world.
Cheers