This is especially true when you're reversing a codec. I helped out reversing ALAC (Apple's answer to FLAC), and I didn't know what 99.9% of the code did, I ju

This is especially true when you're reversing a codec. I helped out reversing ALAC (Apple's answer to FLAC), and I didn't know what 99.9% of the code did, I just knew how it needed to do it. Certain things fit common patterns with simple changes (e.g. modified Rice coding), but most of the time you're just matching code behavior directly. I will say, building an encoder based solely on the reverse-engineered decoder (didn't want to reverse out the encoder as well -- total mess) is a really fun challenge. Good way to dive into codec work.