Post #2729605

2026-04-19 12:26 UTC

@RuchiraSDatta@mathstodon.xyz excellent point -- it shows there's more layers/dimensions to the ethical considerations than you might think. Consider some bit of software that fairly and genuinely promotes human flourishing -- but comes at a staggering environmental cost. Compare that with some alternative that is more energy-efficient but is roughly like the worst of rage-bait social media. What should you do? I can easily imagine students disagreeing about this. Now I need to think about other dynamics like this: your design seems very good, very ethical, but there's another angle in which it is harmful.

Replies (2)

@RuchiraSDatta@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-20 16:25

@ddrake@mathstodon.xyz I was thinking of more widespread examples, e.g., the less efficient way of writing software is in a library or toolkit or API that you already know and which has a much wider community. So, writing the software in a more environmentally efficient way is going to introduce a delay, which is immediately visible and measurable. The environmental inefficiency accumulates over time invisibly and may be difficult to measure. As a concrete example, take Svelte vs. React. "The most defining philosophical difference between Svelte and other frameworks is the prominence of the compiler. As Rich [Harris, Svelte's creator] puts it, 'It doesn’t make sense to do a lot of work in the browser when every single user has to do that work and you have to ship the code that does that work when you could just do that at compile time.'" https://semaphore.io/blog/rich-harris

Open ##2729606
@RuchiraSDatta@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-20 16:38

@ddrake@mathstodon.xyz There is a discipline of green software development, which is currently still a small niche rather than an integral part of the coding curriculum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-software

Open ##2729607