How to build a thriving open source community by writing code like bacteria do 🦠. Bacterial code (genomes) are:
- small (each line of code costs energy)
- modular (organized into groups of swappable operons)
- self-contained (easily "copy paste-able" via horizontal gene transfer)
If chunks of code are small, modular, self-contained and trivial to copy-and-paste, the community can thrive via horizontal gene transfer. For any function (gene) or class (operon) that you write: can you imagine someone going "yoink" without knowing the rest of your code or having to import anything new, to gain a benefit? Could your code be a trending GitHub gist?
This coding style guide has allowed bacteria to colonize every ecological nook from cold to hot to acidic or alkaline in the depths of the Earth and the vacuum of space, along with an insane diversity of carbon anabolism, energy metabolism, etc. It excels at rapid prototyping but... it can't build complex life. By comparison, the eukaryotic genome is a significantly larger, more complex, organized and coupled monorepo. Significantly less inventive but necessary for complex life - for building entire organs and coordinating their activity. With our advantage of intelligent design, it should possible to take advantage of both. Build a eukaryotic monorepo backbone if you have to, but maximize bacterial DNA.
