I hate environmentalists. Don't get me wrong, I love the environment, I even call myself a geolibertarian at Mises conferences, but the problem I have with environmentalists is that they think "the world doesn't boil down to dollars and cents" (This was actually said to me).
Let's be very, very generous here and assume that it would take twice as long to code something in C that it would in Python. Let's assume that the code isn't a static library, but something like a web app or equivalent. Doubling the number of developers to get the 10x speed up / 90% reduction in server use is not worth it from an environmental perspective. Those developers use resources to live. They burn fuel to heat their dinner. They drive their car to work.
These types of arguments are trying to make an emotional plea to a perceived market failure. The solution is to fix the market, not waste time implementing stuff in C. Tax pollution at the rate at which it would take to clean it up and the market will automatically allocate resources efficiently.
You shoot down our own argument. The video suggest C# and Java as alternatives to interpreted languages. By picking C you are deliberately trying to make your argument sound stronger than it is. The video also mentions the economic cost.
From an economics point of view you are just wrong. Because of the vast numbers of computers used in 'scale out' architectures the impact of code efficiency is enormously bigger than the cost of developers. If a developer's code runs on 10 or 100 machines then you are correct. But modern software runs on hundreds or even hundreds of thousand machines.
For scientific computing and data crunching, trying to get the MOST OUT OF THE HARDWARE, I would agree you are wasting resources using a interpreted language, and it is inefficient.
But when your goal is first to market, and trying to get the MOST OUT OF THE PROGRAMMERS - it is a waste of human resources, and programmer enjoyment using a compiled language with an unfriendly syntax.
Of course, you could find experienced programmers who are super fast productive, and super happy to work in the compiled languages - but don't underestimate that most people enjoy interpreted's ease of getting started, and syntax simplicity - and usually they cost less to hire as there is a larger pool of people.
But is that not the point of the post - that all the 'easy and cheep' comes at a huge cost to be planet and eventually to the company. Are C# and Java really that much harder to learn and use?
I have to disagree here. Although I know that the speaker is just trying to have fun with the idea the metaphor is flawed. whereas a Mercedes engine gets more and more powerful and not any more efficient computer processors are getting more efficient by the day. also the "10 to 100 times slower" comment seems like an exaggeration to me. In the end the language you use should be decided by what will give your customers the best software possible and nothing else. Because its not immoral to waste the computers time but it is immoral to waste the users time.
The page below shows the media peformance of Python (the fastest in these of PHP/Ruby/Python) as 49.73 times slower than the fastest compiled language. The seems pretty much between 10 and 100 to me.
There are plenty of bench marks showing 10 to 100 times is in the ball part. Computers use masses of power because there are so many of them. As they get more efficient, their numbers increase. The benefit of using faster languages is constant irrespective of the efficiency of the machine on which it is running. How can wasting energy be OK? Even if you don't think it has climate change effects, it has economic and energy security effects - non of them good.
Not sure of the connection here. BTW - check out the nerds-central post on why Thorium matters if you are pro-nuclear - it might have some good amo for you to use.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|14 years ago|reply
Let's be very, very generous here and assume that it would take twice as long to code something in C that it would in Python. Let's assume that the code isn't a static library, but something like a web app or equivalent. Doubling the number of developers to get the 10x speed up / 90% reduction in server use is not worth it from an environmental perspective. Those developers use resources to live. They burn fuel to heat their dinner. They drive their car to work.
These types of arguments are trying to make an emotional plea to a perceived market failure. The solution is to fix the market, not waste time implementing stuff in C. Tax pollution at the rate at which it would take to clean it up and the market will automatically allocate resources efficiently.
[+] [-] cassandravoiton|14 years ago|reply
From an economics point of view you are just wrong. Because of the vast numbers of computers used in 'scale out' architectures the impact of code efficiency is enormously bigger than the cost of developers. If a developer's code runs on 10 or 100 machines then you are correct. But modern software runs on hundreds or even hundreds of thousand machines.
[+] [-] tommorris|14 years ago|reply
Ooh, ooh, Betteridge's Law of Headlines - http://enwp.org/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines - has the answer: no.
[+] [-] lukeholder|14 years ago|reply
But when your goal is first to market, and trying to get the MOST OUT OF THE PROGRAMMERS - it is a waste of human resources, and programmer enjoyment using a compiled language with an unfriendly syntax.
Of course, you could find experienced programmers who are super fast productive, and super happy to work in the compiled languages - but don't underestimate that most people enjoy interpreted's ease of getting started, and syntax simplicity - and usually they cost less to hire as there is a larger pool of people.
[+] [-] cassandravoiton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdg92989|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cassandravoiton|14 years ago|reply
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programming-lan...
Fortran Intel 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.01 1.35 1.87 7.84 C GNU gcc 1.00 1.00 1.01 1.21 1.55 2.36 4.97 C++ GNU g++ 1.00 1.00 1.10 1.26 1.68 2.28 2.28 ATS 1.00 1.00 1.24 1.45 2.30 3.90 7.24 Ada 2005 GNAT 1.04 1.04 1.22 1.51 1.84 2.76 4.81 Java 7 -server 1.40 1.40 1.59 1.90 2.14 2.97 4.76 Scala 1.38 1.38 1.90 2.76 3.43 5.72 10.21 Haskell GHC 1.53 1.53 2.60 2.80 4.36 7.00 15.15 Go 1.29 1.29 2.12 2.85 6.90 14.08 24.05 C# Mono 1.60 1.60 2.62 3.08 7.12 13.88 14.21 Lisp SBCL 1.12 1.12 1.81 3.40 4.24 7.89 11.20 OCaml 1.18 1.18 1.76 3.75 4.87 9.24 9.24 Pascal Free Pascal 1.53 1.53 2.47 4.37 7.49 15.03 24.20 Clojure 2.02 2.02 3.50 4.99 8.44 14.81 14.81 F# Mono 2.97 2.97 3.16 5.33 8.92 17.57 37.80 Racket 1.22 1.22 5.06 6.86 11.04 19.99 59.08 Erlang HiPE 5.17 5.17 7.99 10.79 15.44 26.61 41.54 Erlang 5.40 5.40 14.20 22.73 30.09 53.91 218.10 Python 3 1.22 1.22 9.25 49.73 68.86 131.37 131.37 PHP 1.90 1.90 10.29 50.17 83.42 193.10 260.90 Ruby 1.9 4.67 4.67 11.74 53.29 101.33 235.71 356.61 Ruby JRuby 5.75 5.75 26.67 58.81 115.06 247.65 266.51 Perl 4.00 4.00 22.61 103.29 126.82 225.35 225.35[+] [-] cassandravoiton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noarchy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cassandravoiton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cultureulterior|14 years ago|reply
CO2 is only a problem if we let it be.
[+] [-] NerdsCentral|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skore|14 years ago|reply