Yes, we know Toady doesn't want anyone to play with code. take that as read.
However, I think that the coders amongst us *might* be able give him some pointers when it comes to esoteric data structures and design ideas, thats where we, as ALPHA testers come in.
No one man, as far as I am concerned (being a developer of 15+ years experience) can hold the entirety of an application in his head, unless its a trivial implementation. Add in the wonders of user modification, insanely odd uses of a generic engine, and the myriad of choices that an application like DF allows, and the beauty and simplicity of the design can very quickly become chaoticised (look ma, a new word!) with specific case coding constructs. Been there, Done that, re-written the engine multiple times and got the pizza.
I'm not belittling Toady's stated preference for handling the code himself (It's the way I like to work as well), but I really do like to see him give us the gems of information on the backend structure, and I'd love, and I know others would love, to be able to join him in a virtual brainstorm sometime.
Who knows? maybe someone out there has the perfect solution for something that Toady hasn't got the design perfectly sorted for