> Then factor in the energy of the developer and its supporting environment for the extra development time (commuting, air conditioning / heating, laptop, monit

> Then factor in the energy of the developer and its supporting environment for the extra development time (commuting, air conditioning / heating, laptop, monitors, etc.) The less the load on the app, the more important it gets. No, it's almost always negligible because it's essentially a one-time cost, whereas the program's inefficiencies are multiplied by an unknown number of users over an unknown period of time (cf. Cobol programs still being in use today) - but for sure your goal is often to maximize both of these unknown numbers. This fact is very obvious when you develop hardware/firmware combos. The firmware is often designed to minimize the hardware costs (RAM size, mass storage size,...) because the cost of producing the hardware is per piece, while the development cost is mostly a one-time cost that one rarely includes in the total cost of the product.