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The electricity gains to be had are likely very small. Minuscule, even. Humans are not ecologically neutral, we consume food that has environmental impacts. Dep

The electricity gains to be had are likely very small. Minuscule, even. Humans are not ecologically neutral, we consume food that has environmental impacts. Depending on diet and other lifestyle (physical activity, for example) factor into a humans ecological impact. By increasing the amount of time a human spends on something, you proportionally increase the ecological impact of the task the human is performing. The idea is that duplicating or redoing work may be more costly in aggregate, but absolute terms to the environment than the small offset in energy to be had by making the code more efficient. The point isn't about the absolute numbers, it's just trying to illustrate that the numbers are so small that it might as well be a rounding error unless you're talking about industry or society-levels of impact, which Clojure does not really have.

brabel 3y ago
> The electricity gains to be had are likely very small. Minuscule, even. That's just wrong. Electricity used by data centers today add up to the whole consumption of a largish country. If you can save even just 5% of that, it's an enormous difference. Companies like Google and Netflix spend millions to save much less than that in computing.
- packetlost 3y ago
  If only it were that simple! If such a gain could be made by simply switching your programming language to one that is "more efficient" (in power consumption terms) we would see Google writing everything in C++, instead of the mix of Go, Python, Java, PHP, etc. that comprises most of their software stacks! But no, that's not how it works at all. Nearly half (about 40%)[^1] of datacenter's total power draw on average is from cooling, which is usually shared across every server in the datacenter. Next, about 30%[^2] of the average server's power draw comes from its CPU (this obviously varies, even at different times on the same server), most servers sit at about 50% utilization on average. So already we're looking at 50% of 30% of 60% = 9% total of energy consumption going to the CPU with very rough, over-estimations. Now Clojure makes up about 1.25% of code, ish[^3]. Let's round that up to 1.5% to be generous. So a reeeeally rough estimate has Clojure code taking up 0.135% of total datacenter power usage globally assuming averages for pretty much everything. I had trouble finding benchmarks for Clojure vs. Common Lisp, but Clojure is basically just Java at runtime, so this[^3] will do. Benchmarks are kinda silly, but we're talking about really average performance. The benchmarks I could find had Java beating SBCL on most benchmarks, but let's say you stand to gain a generous 20% efficiency by using SBCL over Java. That leaves you at a 0.027% gain in efficiency with a lot of generous rounding and assumptions. Now, of course most code is not CPU constrained... you get the idea. The efficiency gains are not much at all. [^1]: https://davidmytton.blog/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-use/ https://davidmytton.blog/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-use... [^2]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355862079_A_Review_of_Data_Centers_Energy_Consumption_And_Reliability_Modeling https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355862079_A_Review_... [^3]: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/lisp.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
  - refset 3y ago
    Assuming current multi-tenant infrastructure trends continue, over-provisioning of RAM and slow start up times are likely the much bigger efficiency issues.
  - brabel 3y ago
    Everything you said is a waste of your time. I am not talking about replacing Clojure with Common Lisp. Why did you even come up with that strawman?? The point is that if everyone used more efficient languages, a very large reduction in energy costs could be expected (not just in data centers by the way, every device takes power, and the ridiculously inefficient apps people are running probably cost a lot of energy). It's the same argument as to why you should have a ecofriendly house or whatever: you try to do your part and hope the others will do too. You may be cynic enough to think that makes no difference, but you're just blind to your own unjustified prejudices.
    - medo-bear 3y ago
      Precisely. If you were to divide languages as high level vs low level, or garabge collected vs manual mem management, I feel that SBCL would be on top in terms of energy efficiency in both the formers.
      - packetlost 3y ago
        I think there's some Schemes that could give SBCL a run for it's money, but I have no doubt it would be a very strong contender. I hope this doesn't come across as bashing SBCL, that is not my intent at all.
    - packetlost 3y ago
      > I am not talking about replacing Clojure with Common Lisp. Why did you even come up with that strawman?? Because that's what I was talking about in the first place? I was responding directly to the text under the linked video making an ecological appeal to using SBCL over Clojure. Both are very efficient languages, so that particular appeal seems silly. > The point is that if everyone used more efficient languages, a very large reduction in energy costs could be expected (not just in data centers by the way, every device takes power, and the ridiculously inefficient apps people are running probably cost a lot of energy). Sure, I agree with that. But that's not what was being talked about. If you have data or sources you can share that show studies that model how much energy could be saved, I'd love to see them. > It's the same argument as to why you should have a ecofriendly house or whatever: you try to do your part and hope the others will do too. So don't write load bearing applications in Python. But most code is not load bearing or even executed that often. The energy usage of SBCL vs Clojure is like making the decision to unplug your toaster when you're not using it, and it's not even clear which is more efficient. > You may be cynic enough to think that makes no difference, but you're just blind to your own unjustified prejudices. I looked at the data and came to a conclusion. I was talking about choosing one pretty efficient language over another, you were talking about something else. > Everything you said is a waste of your time. You have no right to tell me what is a waste of my time. I found it quite interesting, I just wish we could've had a conversation made in good faith instead of whatever this was.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
> The electricity gains to be had are likely very small. Minuscule, even. Humans are not ecologically neutral, we consume food that has environmental impacts. A human who spends his day writing code is going to consume (at worst) the exact same amount of food as if he spent only half his day coding and the other half on something else. He might even consume less food while coding, if his non-coding activity is something physically intensive (i.e. burns more calories). I don't really see how the implication (that saving human time saves energy too) can possibly be true.
fulafel 3y ago
Also, paying more or less for the development effort has environmental impacts from the resulting economic activity - slower/harder development makes the software cost more, the downside from co2 foorprint pov is that whoever did it buys more plane tickets to holidays, second cars, etc. (Depends on the domain of the app if it would have been better to finish sooner or later from environmental pov)

brabel 3y ago

> The electricity gains to be had are likely very small. Minuscule, even. That's just wrong. Electricity used by data centers today add up to the whole consumption of a largish country. If you can save even just 5% of that, it's an enormous difference. Companies like Google and Netflix spend millions to save much less than that in computing.

packetlost 3y ago
If only it were that simple! If such a gain could be made by simply switching your programming language to one that is "more efficient" (in power consumption terms) we would see Google writing everything in C++, instead of the mix of Go, Python, Java, PHP, etc. that comprises most of their software stacks! But no, that's not how it works at all. Nearly half (about 40%)[^1] of datacenter's total power draw on average is from cooling, which is usually shared across every server in the datacenter. Next, about 30%[^2] of the average server's power draw comes from its CPU (this obviously varies, even at different times on the same server), most servers sit at about 50% utilization on average. So already we're looking at 50% of 30% of 60% = 9% total of energy consumption going to the CPU with very rough, over-estimations. Now Clojure makes up about 1.25% of code, ish[^3]. Let's round that up to 1.5% to be generous. So a reeeeally rough estimate has Clojure code taking up 0.135% of total datacenter power usage globally assuming averages for pretty much everything. I had trouble finding benchmarks for Clojure vs. Common Lisp, but Clojure is basically just Java at runtime, so this[^3] will do. Benchmarks are kinda silly, but we're talking about really average performance. The benchmarks I could find had Java beating SBCL on most benchmarks, but let's say you stand to gain a generous 20% efficiency by using SBCL over Java. That leaves you at a 0.027% gain in efficiency with a lot of generous rounding and assumptions. Now, of course most code is not CPU constrained... you get the idea. The efficiency gains are not much at all. [^1]: https://davidmytton.blog/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-use/ https://davidmytton.blog/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-use... [^2]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355862079_A_Review_of_Data_Centers_Energy_Consumption_And_Reliability_Modeling https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355862079_A_Review_... [^3]: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/lisp.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
- refset 3y ago
  Assuming current multi-tenant infrastructure trends continue, over-provisioning of RAM and slow start up times are likely the much bigger efficiency issues.
- brabel 3y ago
  Everything you said is a waste of your time. I am not talking about replacing Clojure with Common Lisp. Why did you even come up with that strawman?? The point is that if everyone used more efficient languages, a very large reduction in energy costs could be expected (not just in data centers by the way, every device takes power, and the ridiculously inefficient apps people are running probably cost a lot of energy). It's the same argument as to why you should have a ecofriendly house or whatever: you try to do your part and hope the others will do too. You may be cynic enough to think that makes no difference, but you're just blind to your own unjustified prejudices.
  - medo-bear 3y ago
    Precisely. If you were to divide languages as high level vs low level, or garabge collected vs manual mem management, I feel that SBCL would be on top in terms of energy efficiency in both the formers.
    - packetlost 3y ago
      I think there's some Schemes that could give SBCL a run for it's money, but I have no doubt it would be a very strong contender. I hope this doesn't come across as bashing SBCL, that is not my intent at all.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    > I am not talking about replacing Clojure with Common Lisp. Why did you even come up with that strawman?? Because that's what I was talking about in the first place? I was responding directly to the text under the linked video making an ecological appeal to using SBCL over Clojure. Both are very efficient languages, so that particular appeal seems silly. > The point is that if everyone used more efficient languages, a very large reduction in energy costs could be expected (not just in data centers by the way, every device takes power, and the ridiculously inefficient apps people are running probably cost a lot of energy). Sure, I agree with that. But that's not what was being talked about. If you have data or sources you can share that show studies that model how much energy could be saved, I'd love to see them. > It's the same argument as to why you should have a ecofriendly house or whatever: you try to do your part and hope the others will do too. So don't write load bearing applications in Python. But most code is not load bearing or even executed that often. The energy usage of SBCL vs Clojure is like making the decision to unplug your toaster when you're not using it, and it's not even clear which is more efficient. > You may be cynic enough to think that makes no difference, but you're just blind to your own unjustified prejudices. I looked at the data and came to a conclusion. I was talking about choosing one pretty efficient language over another, you were talking about something else. > Everything you said is a waste of your time. You have no right to tell me what is a waste of my time. I found it quite interesting, I just wish we could've had a conversation made in good faith instead of whatever this was.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

> The electricity gains to be had are likely very small. Minuscule, even. Humans are not ecologically neutral, we consume food that has environmental impacts. A human who spends his day writing code is going to consume (at worst) the exact same amount of food as if he spent only half his day coding and the other half on something else. He might even consume less food while coding, if his non-coding activity is something physically intensive (i.e. burns more calories). I don't really see how the implication (that saving human time saves energy too) can possibly be true.

fulafel 3y ago

Also, paying more or less for the development effort has environmental impacts from the resulting economic activity - slower/harder development makes the software cost more, the downside from co2 foorprint pov is that whoever did it buys more plane tickets to holidays, second cars, etc. (Depends on the domain of the app if it would have been better to finish sooner or later from environmental pov)