Patrick Dubroy writes:
You see, warm-blooded animals — like humans or mice — have a stable body temperature that stays within a pretty narrow range. For humans, it’s around 37 degrees Celsius. A few degrees higher or lower and we’re in big trouble. Cold-blooded animals like the painted turtle can adapt their metabolism to the temperature around them. They’re active when it’s warm out, and as the environment (and their bodies) get cooler, they move more slowly. Very few of them can survive being frozen like the baby painted turtle can.
Patrick extends this metaphor to software projects. There’s some software that requires constant motion and maintenance to survive, like a warm-blooded animal would. For example, this type of software tends to have lots of dependencies—on other software, on upgrades, etc. When one dependency breaks, so does the software. He then contrasts this with software that’s more like a cold-blooded animal:
Some projects are different. You work alone, make some changes when you’re inspired, and then don’t touch it again for another year, or two, or three. You can’t run something like that as a warm-blooded project. There’s not enough activity to keep the temperature up.
A cold-blooded project is like the baby painted turtle. You can freeze it for a year and then pick it back up right where you left off.
This analogy resonates with me. One immediate example that came to my mind is in the world of publishing: books vs. publications.
People pay once for books, and then they—hopefully—read them and talk about them. If you write a timeless book, so long as people are talking about your book and you or your publisher keep printing and distributing copies, you can make money off the royalties.
Contrast that with a newsletter or magazine subscription. People pay every month for a subscription, so they are expecting a new issue every month. If you publish a magazine, you constantly need to work on the next issue. People will not buy your old issues unless they are timeless—or positioned as a collector’s item.
If you’re working as an independent, you want to make a path that depends on nobody else. You want your work to adapt the properties of a cold-blooded animal. Your creative work can adapt to all sorts of constraints and changes in your time and energy. You want to write timeless books, and make games that don’t need a large team to maintain.
If you’re working in partnership with other people, your work will need to adapt the properties of a warm-blooded animal. You and your representatives need constant motion in order for your creative work to see the light of day. You need to constantly inject new energy into your work, and maintain relationships for the work to grow.