>One day the VP eng just showed up at my desk and started chatting, I didn't really know why. Turns out he was interested in knowing why it was so stable

Kudos to him, he paid attention, and noticed something that was stable. Usually something has to be broken to get attention at that level. Can't imagine leadership at most places thinking "hmm, this project we did several years ago had been running without bugs, let me go bring best practices from this developer."