5th June, 2017 — The only day we think about environment.
One of the worst thing happened recently is Donald's Tweet.
But, we all know it's a serious issue. What are you doing today to save the Earth? Please write down in the comments so that we can all be inspired.
Jr. Application Developer | CS graduate | Passionate coder | Problem solver
2 ways:
Too many engineering firms now adays are getting lazy with the development "just because we have fast processors" IMO. This is how my brain thinks, so naturally it spreads throughout my life. And the reality is, as programmers, we have direct control over computer hardware, which is plugged into the wall. Out of the wall comes power and power is GENERATED AT COST at a power plant either using coal, wood, nuclear reactor, wind, water, etc....
This may sound silly, but it's completely true. When I analyze malware, often one of the ways (of many) I get suspicious something is bad during dynamic analysis is when I hear the fan rev up and the computer start to get warm. Why is a "notepad" application cranking all my CPU cores like that? With billions of devices plugged in, you bet that affects the environment.
Personally I try to live in a way that reduces waste (within reason) and I'm very faithful about recycling anything that can be recycled.
Professionally, I started out in graphic design where I was working on lots of printed (paper) goods: brochures, business cards, posters, billboards, folders, stationery, ads, etc. The design part of that process isn't very wasteful, but the actual printing process is unbelievably wasteful. I know trees are a renewable resource, and the 'wasted' paper can be recycled, but all that effort logging + papermaking + shipping + recycling is being wasted too when you throw away a bad print job, or a bad cut job, or an entire print run happened but the colours were slightly out of alignment so you have to reprint the whole run again, etc. The amount of wasted prints on any print job can easily equal, or surpass the number of good final prints by the time the whole process is over! (It's not supposed to, but it often happens anyway).
I didn't switch to doing web design because of the environmental toll of graphic design, but sure does make me feel much better to know that after I'm done my part designing something for the web now, the only 'resources' being used to display that design will be a little bit of electricity (in your device). I'm glad to not be involved with the waste of print design anymore :D
Great question, Betty! I share your disappointment for Trump's decision; and especially now, everyday should be a day when we should think about the environment.
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
— Albert Einstein
If you haven't already, I recommend a watching of the film Before the Flood to understand, and appreciate the very real consequences of the climate change — like this one: a 3-4°C global temperature rise will make many parts of the world uninhabitable.
There is a lot of bad news in the movie, and there are a lot of issues that need to be solved, before any future crises can be averted; but as Obama tells DiCaprio, in the movie:
If we keep pushing, keep prodding, and most importantly keep educating the public there's no reason why we can't solve this problem in time.
We can only do that if we understand the underlying facts and figures. There are excellent resources on the internet (apart from the above film) which will help you do that! Here are a couple of my favourites:
I feel a need to include a former discussion here — things that you could do as a programmer, to strive to be more eco-friendly...
Building on Sai's answer, I think we just need to try and keep writing better code. Never stop refactoring and try to achieve the impossible.
Computers are everywhere these days, which means software is everywhere these days. We can make an impact. A big one at that. Consider battery powered cars for example. I think vehicles based on renewable forms of energy are going to become a thing of the future. Tesla is a fantastic car, but I don't think it's affordable yet for the middle class in countries like India and China. Where I am getting at is, for the costs to become cheaper, they need to achieve the same levels of efficiency at a cheaper price. Minimization. One of the classical computer problems.
What if we can make a car that performs better than a Tesla, but is also cheaper?
No steps as a developer, what would that be?
But as a human I am aware that I do not have an overspending and don't just throw out things that work. I even have some old computers in the closet I don't know yet what to do about, I just don't wanna throw them out.
My contradiction must be the amount I travel especially with airplanes, but I can proudly say today I am not 😛
With that Tweet, the most important thing towards saving the environment, is to disassociate from Trump.
Jr. Application Developer | CS graduate | Passionate coder | Problem solver
Shivani Shinde
Very good question. I totally believe that, as a developer we can contribute to this day or not just this day but everyday in many ways. Like the idea of smart light switches, saving energy. As a developer, I can think of creating an application which will keep us updated about our contribution to global warming. Example: if we use a car for shorter distances which could be easily replaced by a cycle/walk, it will give us an overall estimate of the air pollution (we have caused), same goes with electricity, water, etc. If we can connect our consumption to an application and see the graph and analysis, I believe on every individual level we will have a good realization and might reduce our contribution to global warming.
This is just an idea, might be useful, might not. I look out for things to do, which helps me in keeping our environment clean and green. But, this isn't daily, sometimes, I do things (accidentally) which will harm our environment but, if we could get a daily statistic report on our app, I guess there will be a decent improvement.
Again, this is just a simple idea (might work out).