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Principles of Green Software Engineering

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Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#81

Post by ericb »

hinkley wrote: post #68
ericb wrote: post #25

I wonder if this might be penny wise and pound foolish. Hypothetically, if it takes even a single week longer to make code much more efficient and only 20% of that workforce is driving to work, making coffee, running their laptops, etc, do you come out ahead?

The XKCD comic on these needs a separate column for open source. If thousands of companies are using my library, then there really is a case to be made for making it as efficient as we can within the bounds of maintenance concerns.

I think the multiplier is a good point and adds an interesting dimension to this question.

For example, a SaaS app with mainly one running instance has a really low multiplier vs. a popular open source project.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#82

Post by lupire »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #46
mfer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies still have control their data centers or some portion of them. At least to an extent to control how things are scheduled on hardware. Kubernetes is similar enough to Borg (the datacenter/cluster OS that Google uses) to efficiently schedule workloads over a cluster. There are ways to use it anyplace one has a cluster for that purpose. This is just to provide an example.

I agree, you can architect your system to make better use of hardware for sure. What I meant was: I can't tell AWS to make more efficient power switching or design an ASIC that is lower power. Best I can do is say that if they don't I'll move to another provider. It's been a long time since I've worked with a company with any significant number of physical racks they rent/own where they can put their own hardware on…

> What I meant was: I can't tell AWS to make more efficient power switching or design an ASIC that is lower power. Best I can do is say that if they don't I'll move to another provider.

Sure, but Amazon is already doing that, because more energy efficient hardware is more profitable for them, since they'll save on electricity they aren't charging you for. Even without a competitor, they'd be incentivized.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#83

Post by lupire »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #53
adrianN wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not buying stuff you don't need and the like are measures and individual can take that don't have hidden carbon downsides.

But they don't even amount to a rounding error. It might be a big personal sacrifice to give up your SUV or meat or whatever, but you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking you're doing anything for the environment because it's not even a drop in the ocean. It's literally negligible, immeasurable, etc. The only thing we can reasonably do is lobby our legislators for carbon pricing, including giving or volunteering w…

I'll play that game.

First, > It might be a big personal sacrifice to give up your SUV or meat or whatever.

No, it's not. It saves money and makes you healthier.

> lobby our legislators

Has such a tiny percent chance of success that it's effectively just a drop on the ocean. If enough people (a majority!) cared that they convinced legislators, then that same majority could have a substantial effect by buying less junk.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#84

Post by sylvainr65 »

I don't follow. We wrote fax softwares that eliminated the need to buy a fax. We wrote accounting softwares that eliminated the need to have hundred of accountants to get to the office every day, using cars! We wrote softwares that eliminated the need to sell and buy physical encyclopedias, dictionaries, watches, photo albums, typewriters, books, compasses, maps, calculators, tickets, cameras, VHS, calendars, answering machines, telephones, flashlights, radios, newspapers, agendas, snail mail, sound systems, physical money. We wrote softwares that get anything delivered to your door without having you getting in your car and spending hours in 3 physical stores. We wrote softwares that make it possible to share your neighbor car for a little fee. We wrote softwares that can assess climate changes effects.

To me, softwares are the greenest inventions ever.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#85

Post by throwaway2016a »

goodpoint wrote: post #76
throwaway2016a wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been skeptical of those. Especially the ones that do things like measure the brightness of the pixels. For the amount of time someone tends to spend on a single page it seems like optimizing just one page is like a water dropper in an ocean. Whereas, say, Visual Studio for instance is on my screen 6+ hours a day. But maybe my next web app I'll take that into consideration.

> I've always been skeptical of those. CPU usage is a very accurate proxy of energy usage. Second to that, network traffic. Simply ignore pages that use poor metrics. > Whereas, say, Visual Studio for instance is on my screen 6+ hours a day. ...and some people have private jets, but this is whataboutism.

That second part of that comment was very unnecessary. Please don't do that on HN, I even threw you a bone at the end and said:

> But maybe my next web app I'll take that into consideration.

Your whataboutism comment is also off base since the comment you were replying to was asking about bloated non-browser desktop apps so my comment is very much relevant. And the parent to that comment was about software efficiency. If anything you're the one off topic.

It's fair to say: well actually they are very accurate because of CPU usage. You don't have to agree with me. But to result to ad hominem is unnecessary. Let's keep it civil.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#86

Post by iamstupidsimple »

lwouis wrote: post #50
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

Instead of micromanaging performance and energy usage; use data centers that use clean energy. It's dirty energy that we need to stop using. Clean energy, we should feel less constrained about (without wasting it obviously). Long term when we have a surplus, it shouldn't matter how much we use. Short term, increased demand actually grows the renewable supply mostly because that is the cheapest way to meet that demand…

There is no such thing as "clean energy". Energy always entails environmental impact. As an example, a wind turbine has large environment impact: * During its production: mining to get the metals, heavy metal work like making steel, cement, resins, etc. Digging large mines, driving trucks all around with heavy materials * During its operations: noise, visual pollution, often destroying wildlife sites as people don't…

> During its operations: noise, visual pollution, often destroying wildlife sites as people don't want them close to their living areas

The UK's mostly solved this by putting turbines a couple miles off the coast. And the benefit of having that renewable energy vastly outweighs the environmental impact of "noise".

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#88

Post by sokoloff »

hinkley wrote: post #65
BoxOfRain wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how many kW of power things that HN generally disparages as bloated (Electron being the main one people talk about) actually adds up to versus more efficient technologies?

One of the elephants in the climate crisis room is coming to grips with how many watt-hours are appropriate to spend on a task that could be completed with human power alone. As Denis Leary used to joke, we have exercise machines that mimic normal activities which we refuse to do, so we are all turning into hamsters. Maybe instead of a leaf blower I need a broom with a better design and just count the cardio I'm goin…

The primary fossil (nat gas) derived chemical is nitrogen. No amount of you fussing over the plants is likely to replace or substantially diminish their need for nitrogen. It can avoid using weed control products, which are overwhelmingly not fossil-sourced.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#89

Post by sokoloff »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #85
goodpoint wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always been skeptical of those. CPU usage is a very accurate proxy of energy usage. Second to that, network traffic. Simply ignore pages that use poor metrics. > Whereas, say, Visual Studio for instance is on my screen 6+ hours a day. ...and some people have private jets, but this is whataboutism.

That second part of that comment was very unnecessary. Please don't do that on HN, I even threw you a bone at the end and said: > But maybe my next web app I'll take that into consideration. Your whataboutism comment is also off base since the comment you were replying to was asking about bloated non-browser desktop apps so my comment is very much relevant. And the parent to that comment was about software efficiency…

Where was the ad hominem attack? Unless the other poster somehow happens to know you have a private jet (which no one else would reasonably know unless you just got oddly defensive about it), I can’t see it.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#90

Post by pdimitar »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #69
horsawlarway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100%. Reading through this thread has me damn well convinced that most folks have zero idea how much power things in their homes use.

It's interesting, I've been planning to move onto a sailing yacht for a while and part of the planning process has involved figuring out an energy budget which will inform what batteries and charging equipment (solar panels etc) are required to run a WFH (WFB?) setup. I bought a simple plug-in power meter and I was very surprised by the power usage of some things in my life!

Which power meter did you use?
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