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This comes from an academic who doesn’t support any code. Why would I spend the time as a developer to do manual memory management under the guise of efficiency

by aejnsn 5y ago

This comes from an academic who doesn’t support any code. Why would I spend the time as a developer to do manual memory management under the guise of efficiency, when instead I can support twice (arbitrary) as many apps making a computer do it for me? This is a human, whose carbon footprint is terrible compared to a little memory overhead. SMH. Silly articles.

quelsolaar 5y ago
Slow languages create greenhouse gasses, C does not produce more humans (yet).
- aejnsn 5y ago
  I understand that premise—read my prior comment again, or do you, like the author, also not understand how code is supported?
  - quelsolaar 5y ago
    I understand perfectly. You are not the first one who thinks its easier to ignore the climate crisis, then to put in money and effort needed to deal with it.
    - aejnsn 5y ago
      If you want to spend the screen time to prematurely optimize in the name of future savings, knock yourself out. I’ve been doing this long enough to understand where efficiency gains exist—it’s not in human-conceived memory micromanagement.
    - dwaltrip 5y ago
      The human effort saved by using a less compute-efficient but easier-to-work-with programming language could be redirected to attacking climate change from another angle. We'd have to look at the details to see which one is more effective overall. Although my gut says that "not programming in C" is generally the correct approach for your average piece of software.
alerighi 5y ago
Also a badly written C program can be more inefficient than a python one.
- aejnsn 5y ago
  Doesn’t matter. The fewer lines of Python are more maintainable in human hours. I am not debating the efficiency of the compiler or program. I am however stating there is a massive oversight on the maintenance of the code, which would lead to a net loss in human overhead. Some napkin carbon footprint math—a computer on for eight hours daily does ~200 kg of CO2 in a given year. An average human on the planet is doing ~7,000 kg. Which means the average human’s 8-hour workday is ~6.4 kg CO2. Yeah, let’s pull out the abacus and the slide rule while we’re at it, in the interest of carbon footprints. /s

by aejnsn 5y ago

quelsolaar 5y ago

Slow languages create greenhouse gasses, C does not produce more humans (yet).

aejnsn 5y ago
I understand that premise—read my prior comment again, or do you, like the author, also not understand how code is supported?
- quelsolaar 5y ago
  I understand perfectly. You are not the first one who thinks its easier to ignore the climate crisis, then to put in money and effort needed to deal with it.
  - aejnsn 5y ago
    If you want to spend the screen time to prematurely optimize in the name of future savings, knock yourself out. I’ve been doing this long enough to understand where efficiency gains exist—it’s not in human-conceived memory micromanagement.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    The human effort saved by using a less compute-efficient but easier-to-work-with programming language could be redirected to attacking climate change from another angle. We'd have to look at the details to see which one is more effective overall. Although my gut says that "not programming in C" is generally the correct approach for your average piece of software.

alerighi 5y ago

Also a badly written C program can be more inefficient than a python one.

aejnsn 5y ago
Doesn’t matter. The fewer lines of Python are more maintainable in human hours. I am not debating the efficiency of the compiler or program. I am however stating there is a massive oversight on the maintenance of the code, which would lead to a net loss in human overhead. Some napkin carbon footprint math—a computer on for eight hours daily does ~200 kg of CO2 in a given year. An average human on the planet is doing ~7,000 kg. Which means the average human’s 8-hour workday is ~6.4 kg CO2. Yeah, let’s pull out the abacus and the slide rule while we’re at it, in the interest of carbon footprints. /s