A Salesforce survey of more than 1,000 technologists found that 75% of UX designers, developers, and IT managers want to reduce software’s environmental harm, but half are unsure how to implement such changes.
As far as instrumentation (measuring the energy consumption) is concerned we can start from the statement that execution time and energy consumption are roughly proportional [Energy Efficiency across Programming Languages, Pereira et al., table 4]. With that in mind I would recommend using a good profiler.
Armed with a good profiler and knowledge of the more efficient programming languages (C, Rust, or C++) software designers can make a huge difference.
A more efficient (thus energy friendly) application requires less compute time which is quite obvious, but what most people forget is that because of this it effectively frees up the CPU and gives room to other jobs to execute. In total less computers will be necessary to execute the same functionality and therefore the materials carbon footprint will also be reduced which is a very welcome side effect in this mineral-intensive era.
Finally, buy in from higher management is definitely required to make this transition happen since engineers using the less performant programming languages and technologies are usually more productive.
Devs, IT Leaders Urged To Embrace Climate-Conscious Coding Practices
Posted by: John P. Mello Jr. August 1, 2023 05:00 AMA Salesforce survey of more than 1,000 technologists found that 75% of UX designers, developers, and IT managers want to reduce software’s environmental harm, but half are unsure how to implement such changes.