The Efficiency Paradox & How to Save Yourself & the World • Holly Cummins • YOW! 2024

This presentation was recorded at YOW! Australia 2024. #GOTOcon #YOW https://yowcon.com Holly Cummins - Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Red Hat Quarkus Team @Holly_Cummins RESOURCES https://hollycummins.com https://hollycummins.com/type/blog https://bsky.app/profile/hollycummins.com https://hachyderm.io/@holly_cummins https://twitter.com/holly_cummins https://github.com/holly-cummins https://linkedin.com/in/holly-k-cummins ABSTRACT Inefficiency is ruining our planet and our lives. Efficiency is ruining our happiness, and weirdly, it’s also ruining our efficiency. Heeeeelppp!? What’s a techie to do? Zombie servers and slow code are a big climate problem, but the vrrrooom model gives us double-win hope. Holly walks through a range of techniques that can be used to find and eliminate software waste and reduce climate impacts. But machine efficiency isn’t much use without human efficiency. Surprisingly, sorting out machine efficiency often helps humans, too. For example, the Quarkus Java framework uses many interesting waste-reduction techniques. These optimisations have the dual benefit of speeding up computers, and also speeding up people. So far, so good, but we need to be careful we don’t end up accidentally optimising the wrong things, and making stuff worse. 100% utilisation is not sustainable for either humans, or people. It’s not even very efficient (what!?). Holly gives a brief tour of the brain’s default mode network, the latest business research, and queueing theory, to show why we actually achieve more when we do a bit less. [...] TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 03:01 Waste 05:41 e-waste is killing the planet 08:39 Zombie servers 09:32 Data 11:10 Solution: LightSwitchOps 15:36 Solution: Faster code 19:23 Case study: Quarkus 21:29 Java dynamism 24:13 How do we fix all this? 27:18 Example: Logging 27:59 Example: Hibernate 28:23 Developer joy 33:29 We have a solution 36:05 How efficient can we get? 36:37 Speed vs Resiliency 39:09 Jevon's paradox 43:08 The value slack 44:22 Australians are laid back? 46:52 Idle minds can solve hard problems 53:37 Efficiency 55:15 Conclusions 57:00 Outro Download slides and read the full abstract here: https://yowcon.com/brisbane-2024/sessions/3560 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, & Sara Bergman • Building Green Software • https://amzn.to/3UjSClv Marc Nuri San Felix • Full Stack Quarkus & React • https://amzn.to/4cXyRrh John Clingan & Ken Finnigan • Kubernetes Native Microservices with Quarkus & MicroProfile • https://amzn.to/4cWQ3wV Davi Vieira • Designing Hexagonal Architecture with Java • https://amzn.to/3Q4H3vU Ioannis Kolaxis • 101 Green Software • https://www.kolaxis.dev/book-green-software Mehdi Khosrow-Pour • Green Computing Strategies for Competitive Advantage and Business Sustainability • https://amzn.to/2YXbI7j Lässig, Kersting & Morik • Computational Sustainability • https://amzn.to/3APBW8r Carola Lilienthal • Sustainable Software Architecture • https://amzn.to/3yFXxoS https://bsky.app/profile/gotocon.com https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #Quarkus #RedHatQuarkus #JavaDynamism #JevonsParadox #BuildingGreenSoftware #Sustainability #SustainableSoftware #CarbonEfficiency #LightSwitchOps #Efficiency #Decarbonization #GreenCloud #GreenComputing #GreenCoding #Programming #GreenSoftware #HollyCummins #YOWcon CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1