I was driving home last week listening to the radio, when an article came on discussing alternative energy sources.  A stray right brain neuron must have fired and I began wondering how what we do in DI impacts on the environment.  After all almost every other technology has some kind of environmental grading.  Certainly my fridge and my car do, and every company is aware of the impact of their hardware consumption, but there seems to be little consideration as to whether software can have an impact on carbon footprint.

It is generally recognised that code (correctly) created using DI tools is more performant than hand cranked code.  This means that less hardware is used to perform the same actions.  Less hardware means lower carbon footprint, means more environmentally friendly.

This is even more profound when one considers the MPP technologies that can dramatically increase performance and scalability.  If one can negate the need for new hardware or even remove existing infrastructure then the impact is not only positive from an environmental perspective, but also from a cost perspective.

And so I have arrived at the conclusion that DI tools are at the positive end of the green scale and perhaps performance should be given a higher priority when evaluating software.

Extending this argument slightly, should software vendors be touting their green credentials?  Should there perhaps be benchmarks that could provide an "energy rating" for software?

If  this did happen then one would hope we would see a return to leaner code and more efficient programming practices, meaning that we are all less likely to hear the words "just throw some more tin at it"