one of the nice things about computer music is the way in which it can be a collaboration between musician and engineer, so much so that the lines are frequently blurred. i certainly got the impression from the article that in this case, Moorer was himself involved in the development of the synthesis package and even the signal processor itself.

Fundamentally though, you are of course correct. This was a mainframe in the 80s, so presumably there was an operating system and system libraries and they all played a part, so should we credit those developers as well? it's tortoises all the way down.

This same conversation could very easily be applied to OSS.

No idea why you are being downvoted, your point is a sensible one to make.

Composers have a 'musical imagination' and often write at the keyboard of (typically) a piano. Classical composers sometimes write music that is not 'idiomatic' for a particular instrument; adjustments follow. From the original article it seems as if the composer had a definite idea of what he was after and adjusted things until he got close.

What interests me about the original anecdote is the use of random numbers in the parameters, and the difficulty that the composer had in reproducing a particular 'state' of the sample.