Yeah, these codebase-gurus are often bottlenecks. I personally think they should invest time on documentation and walkthroughs. They could also answer some que

Yeah, these codebase-gurus are often bottlenecks. I personally think they should invest time on documentation and walkthroughs. They could also answer some questions on the condition that the newly-enlightened person must document the answer. (Kind of like caching.) The problem is that many programmers have little training in effective communication (that is, the skill of somehow transferring/inspiring a mental representation from your mind into someone else's). It's like pulling teeth to get them to document — even if they desperately want to escape being pigeonholed as the only one who understands the crappy legacy system. (Even when job security isn't an issue.)