Coursera Spring Sale
40% Off Coursera Plus Annual!
Grab it
Explore the complex relationship between efficiency and sustainability in this 57-minute conference talk from YOW! Australia 2024, where Holly Cummins, Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Red Hat Quarkus Team, examines how inefficiency damages our planet while paradoxically, excessive efficiency can harm both human happiness and actual productivity. Learn about the environmental impact of software waste, including zombie servers and e-waste, and discover practical solutions like LightSwitchOps and faster code optimization techniques. Dive into a detailed case study of the Quarkus Java framework, which demonstrates waste-reduction techniques that benefit both machine performance and developer productivity by addressing Java dynamism challenges. Understand how to identify and eliminate software waste through examples involving logging and Hibernate optimization, while exploring the concept of developer joy as a crucial factor in sustainable software development. Examine the counterintuitive principle that 100% utilization is unsustainable for both humans and systems, drawing insights from brain science research on the default mode network, business studies, and queueing theory to understand why achieving more sometimes requires doing less. Investigate Jevons' paradox and its implications for efficiency gains, learn about the critical value of slack in systems and human productivity, and discover how idle minds contribute to solving complex problems. Gain practical knowledge about building green software, carbon efficiency strategies, and sustainable architecture principles while understanding the balance between speed and resiliency in modern software systems.
