[rapefruit]

http://playrust.com/friday-devblog/

We are working for you, but please keep your expectations reasonable. We’re still a relatively small team. Just because we’ve sold a million copies – it doesn’t mean we’re going to hire 1,000 people. More cooks do not make a better game. That said, we are hiring if you’re awesome so hit us up!

I don't really know anything about coding, but what's stopping them from hiring people just to help them clean up the code, and not just to work on adding content? What would the repercussions be of hiring a good few reliable people who have a talent for coding to help them make these systems tidy for each new update by going over the code and finding more efficient ways of doing it?

In what ways will having people cleaning up after you, or adding things under your supervision, limit the game from being good?

[RBMK1000]

Your question is being answered in the last sentence of Garry's quote, isn't it?

[rapefruit]

RBMK1000 posted:

Your question is being answered in the last sentence of Garry's quote, isn't it?

From what it sounds like, if they've working a long time with such a small team, it doesn't make much sense to me why it'd be so take so long to find programmers to speed up development and why it would be such a difficult process.

That's what I'm asking about in the OP, as well as an explanation of why "more cooks" would spoil it.

[dawiha]

Even for experienced programmers there will always be a learning curve when starting new projects. And a programmer just to go over someone elses code isn't really how it works.

[Sievers808]

Programming uses a lot of variables and everyone has their own techniques, having some new guy come in and go through everyone else's code may seem like a simple solution but it's no where near that simple.

Obviously it depends on what language is being coded, but if you don't have a solid understanding of every line and what it does then you're basically just staring at a jumbled mess of code.

[MrTHC]

Sievers808 posted:

Programming uses a lot of variables and everyone has their own techniques, having some new guy come in and go through everyone else's code may seem like a simple solution but it's no where near that simple.

Obviously it depends on what language is being coded, but if you don't have a solid understanding of every line and what it does then you're basically just staring at a jumbled mess of code.

Andre joined recently didn't he, and he is busting his ass from the looks of it, just look at trello.

[RBMK1000]

I guess there's more than one reason why adding new people to a small team isn't a trivial thing. It's not only about skill, but also about personality and how well a person fits into the existing team. Also, having a small team has quite a few benefits, number one being an easier and more efficient communication. Generally, a smaller team is working closer together, so everyone has a pretty good insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues, knows how to deal with them, resulting in a very productive and inspiring work environment.

Apart from that, even an experienced programmer needs weeks of reading code written by another person until he can really start working on it and improving it.