Sustainable Software Development
“Not a day passes for me without seeing the many ways in which digital technology can advance peace, human rights, and sustainable development for all.” ~António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations
We are stepping into an era where digitalization is on the rise now, going neck and neck with an uptick of innovative technical changes and advancements. All linked with continuously varying consumer needs pervading in every possible end-user requirement ultimately leading to inculcate the need for constant change in the software development world. Within a stiff competitive environment, the happy clients are with those developers whose software is ahead of the game in the long haul. To achieve the same, playing it safe suddenly became the most fashionable thing to do, and for that sustainable development is the pressing priority. The era of And in recent years there has been explosive growth in attempting to combine digital technology and sustainability.
Let us throw some light on sustainable software development and explore its vitality in brief :
THE SUSTAINED WAY OF WORKING:
“The only way to go fast is to go well.”
Sustainable software development is a set of practices that ensure that a team working together will achieve and maintain an ideal development pace in the long haul, meeting the requirements of the present time along with keeping an account of future needs.
Following are the highlights of software that are sustainably developed :
● reliable, lifelong software
● meets the needs of user’s requirements with reducing ecological impacts
● to generate better software so there is no need to compromise future generations’ opportunities
This kind of working ultimately holds and grabs more happy users for the long run because the products are all successful and continue to be the same because the teams have been able to meet user’s needs over a long period despite persistent competitive pressures and continuously changing technology and market conditions.
THE NEED TO BE SUSTAINED:
“A professional developer is who embraces change, plans well with being flexible in them to drive the development. “
To have a better understanding of the need, let’s take the example of two softwares: X (developed sustainably) and Y(developed unsustainably) respectively and we will compare them based on some standard needs over the long term:
1. PERFORMANCE:
● X- As stable Velocity is marked with a sustainable pace it fulfills the needs of the customer every time due to proper planning and resource management.
● Y- Here, the requests may not be fulfilled or get delayed as a result of irresponsible planning and environmental degradation through the exploitation of resources.
2. INTERNAL STRUCTURE:
● X- Continuously improving despite increasing complexity due to the conduction of accompanying tests and meeting all the deadlines without any technical debt.
● Y- Both brittle and fragile as a result of over-(or under-) design, code-then-fix mentality, too many dependencies between code modules, the lack of safeguards such as automated tests, and so on…
3 . TEAMWORK:
● X-The team fosters practices that help them continually increase their efficiency so that as the project gets complex and customer demands increase along with paying attention to the health of their software.
● Y-Temporary patches are never addressed resulting in permanent glitches as a result these teams are caught in a vicious cycle of reacting to events and working harder and longer hours.
Thus with the help of these contrasting points, one can easily sense the vital need to practice sustainable software development.
HOW SOFTWARE CAN BE SUBSTANTIALLY DEVELOPED :
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often”
To tell in simple words, this development is practiced by meeting the needs of customers in the short term while using practices that support the needs of the long term. This is done while keeping the cost of change as low as possible, which lays the foundation for future changes and makes it possible to quickly respond to changes in the ecosystem.
Some checkpoints to ensure the process of sustainable development:
• Automated testing to catch problems while were working on new features.
•High standards of testing and code quality.
• Don’t overdesign and build only what customers needed.
• Never had a defect backlog.
• Replanning the work as often as it can be done.
Let’s conclude it by having a glimpse of such a real-life example of a program written in the new language, named Eco, adaptively adjusts its behaviors to stay on a given budget, avoiding both deficits that would lead to battery drain or CPU overheating. Sustainability management can be seen here as language runtime consistently maintains the equilibrium between supply and demand.
As expressed all, let’s thrive to explore more such sustainable practices in software development.
~ADITI DONODE