The importance of sustainability in software development

We live in a digital age where innovation and change in technology are fundamentally impacting the way we operate both locally and globally.

Our previous blog, Sustainability as a Strategic Imperative of Product Engineering, discussed key features of why organizations should embrace sustainability in their product engineering cycle and its outcomes.

This blog details how green coding in IT can help us achieve a more sustainable future by minimizing our carbon footprint.

Did you know?

Want to learn more about reducing your digital footprint? Read more to understand the emerging field of green software engineering, along with sustainable software development that can have a meaningful impact on our society and living environment.

History of green software engineering

The software you use on your computer to get from point A to point B has a significant impact on the environment. Research to date has focused on minimizing the carbon emissions of hardware, but little effort has been put into understanding the eco-friendliness of software products, especially from a sustainability perspective. Explore the data [2] The turn of the decade speaks for itself and shows how much more we have to work towards a more sustainable future.

The 2019 pandemic led to increased digital interaction, which led to the creation of the Green Software Foundation. [3]It is a non-profit organization established in 2021. Their main goal was to develop a network of “people, standards, tools and best practices for green software.”

The Foundation has developed a set of eight principles, now of six, as shown in Figure 1, which is rapidly gaining momentum because it provides practical fundamentals for applying to the software development cycle.

Green computing focuses on the effective use of natural resources and supports resource sustainability.

It’s a known fact that software is a key component in everything we use, but what’s less known is that software can impact the sustainability of the environment. Therefore, how we use software is related to our sustainability goals.

Green IT has been defined as “the study and practice of effectively designing, developing, using, and disposing of computers, peripherals, and servers without affecting the environment.” [4].

An interesting paper by Komeil Raisian et al titled Green Measurement for Software Products Based on Sustainability Dimensions suggests three dimensions (economic, social and environmental) that can be measured to call software green software. We broke it down further into seven basic measurements. Related to green factors: productivity, cost savings, usability, employee support, tool support, energy efficiency and resource efficiency. Their study concluded that greenness of software products cannot be achieved without an appropriate green measurement model. Within a framework of dimensions, the above measurements can provide a way to measure how green an organization’s software is.

Additionally, understanding where software’s energy is consumed can help you implement more green coding. 3 main areas [5] Among the software development cycles where the greatest energy is likely to be consumed are:

• infrastructure: IT infrastructure, including hardware and networks, requires energy to operate. Complex or excessive infrastructure often leads to wasteful energy use.
• process: The complexity and size of the software directly affects energy consumption during operation.
• DevOps: The coding process involves writing and processing code and requires energy. If this energy does not come from renewable sources, it creates carbon emissions. More extensive coding means higher energy use and emissions.

green coding

Green coding refers to: Programming sustainable code written with the specific purpose of minimizing the energy consumption of the developed software.Lower energy consumption means less waste, minimal harmful impacts and a benefit to the environment. Green coding practices include optimizing algorithms, reducing code complexity, and minimizing resource usage. [5].

As coding beginners, many coders write messy, long, and inefficient code. That’s the learning process. As we grow as coders, the importance of refactoring becomes important in terms of efficiency and energy utilization. [6]. Refactoring improves the readability and reusability of your code and helps reduce maintenance costs in the long run. However, software developers need efficient tools to test their applications and energy usage. [7]. Moreover, energy can vary uncontrollably in terms of network congestion, user screen brightness, etc.

Sustainability through green coding

The concept of green coding is inspired by Green Computing, which is concerned with the “responsible design, manufacturing, and disposal of physical computing systems.”

Green coding is said to also include green programming, which is known to improve the energy efficiency of multi-core processors. It also incorporates green IT practices such as virtualization and containerization to reduce the number of physical servers and decompose complex software into smaller microservices. And importantly, cloud-based operations help minimize energy consumption.

Here are some key points on how sustainability can be achieved through green coding:

• Use automatic server shutdown for underutilized servers
• Redistribute workload to save energy.
• Optimize code performance
• Prevent repetitive tasks such as recompilation
• Reduce file size
• Reduce network usage
• Utilize efficient algorithms
• Ensure a better compiler capable of virtualization
• Generate more efficient code blocks for target platforms
• Designing applications with optimal levels of microservices
• Automate repetitive tasks

From a more behavioral perspective:

• Focus on collaboration and flexibility
• Leverage automation and efficient workflows
• Use energy-efficient programming languages [8]: Python, Ruby, PhP, etc. are less efficient than Java, C++, Rust, and C.
• Use fewer logging lines
• We introduce user energy saving mode in designed apps.
• FOLLOW THE GREENSOFT MODEL [9] As shown in Figure 2

Advantages of green coding

The benefits of green coding for all stakeholders in the IT sector

Here are some ways to utilize green coding and introduce some changes within your organization:

• This results in less processor execution and less memory usage, resulting in faster response times.
• Avoid bloated, resource-consuming code. Clean, minimal code is essential to being a good coder.
• Leverage a sustainable and energy-efficient data center: Find out how much energy your data center consumes. [10]
• Leveraging Green Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Optimize Energy Use: Green AI vs. Red AI Advocacy [11]
• Switch to green hosting providers and cloud-based platforms that commit to carbon neutrality
• Measurement and Monitoring: From design through product development, sustainability estimates for all functions and stages require records that can be continuously measured as the work progresses. This will help you identify loopholes and know where and what needs to be reduced.

conclusion

The software industry must embrace sustainability for a greener, more balanced future. Green software will help large corporations achieve ESG goals, which are becoming an increasingly important performance measure for all stakeholders, including investors.

As a technology-first company and a pioneer in software product engineering services, Calsoft has the responsibility and commitment to be the change that contributes to building a more secure future in IT products and services for a sustainable tomorrow.

References:

1. https://hbr.org/2020/09/how-green-is-your-software
2. https://techmonitor.ai/focus/tech-industry-carbon-emissions-progress
3. Green Software Foundation | GSF
4. https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/green-IT-green-information- technology
5. Sustainable Software Development: Definition, Best Practices | beet root
6. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2652524.2652538
7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2210537922000063
8. Energy efficiency across programming languages ​​(uminho.pt)
9. https://www.umwelt-campus.de/fileadmin/Umwelt-Campus/Greensoft/The_GREENSOFT_Model_A_reference_model_fo.pdf
10. https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/tip/How-much-energy-do-data-centers-consume
11. 1907.10597.pdf (arxiv.org)