ecoprogramming

Ecoprogramming, also known as green software engineering, is an approach to software development that explicitly considers environmental impact, with emphasis on energy consumption and hardware resource use across the software life cycle. It aims to reduce energy use and carbon emissions while preserving functionality, performance, and reliability, adapting to the energy profile of execution environments such as mobile devices, desktops, and data centers.

Principles include energy-aware design, resource efficiency, and lifecycle thinking. Practitioners seek algorithms and data structures with low energy costs, minimize unnecessary computation and I/O, optimize memory use, and support scalable deployment that avoids energy waste. Techniques include energy profiling and measurement, dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), wake-lock and idle-time reduction, asynchronous and event-driven programming, batching and caching strategies, and hardware-conscious optimization. Architecture patterns such as energy-proportional computing, workload consolidation, and efficient virtualization are commonly employed. Developers also consider the environmental impact of deployment, including cloud energy mix and device lifecycle.

Tools and metrics used in ecoprogramming include power profiling tools, energy measurements per operation, and metrics such as energy-delay product and total cost of ownership. Developers may use power meters, software profilers with power counters, and carbon-intensity data to guide optimization. Industry groups and standards bodies advocate for sustainable software engineering practices and carbon-aware computing, promoting transparent reporting of energy use.

Applications span mobile apps, web services, cloud-based systems, embedded software, and IoT. Examples include energy-efficient mobile apps that minimize background activity, cloud services that optimize server utilization, and edge devices designed for long battery life.

Criticisms note measurement uncertainty, potential conflicts with performance objectives, and the challenge of translating energy savings into meaningful carbon reductions given varying electricity sources.