Top Green Coding Practices Every Developer Should Know

It is no doubt that the digital world is expanding at a rapid pace. For this reason, the environmental cost of advanced technology is prominently increasing while becoming unaffordable for many. At some point, the data centres are consuming huge amounts of energy for their business. Similarly, on the other point, it turns off power is being consumed in the process of bloating inefficient code.

These facts highlight the importance of developers in the market. These professionals are of the most value when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint throughout the tech industry. That’s where the concept of green coding enters.  The phenomenon, also known as sustainable software development is deeply explained in this article.

What is Green Coding?

Green coding can be defined as the practice of writing sustainable lines of code. It means, the code is written in such a way through which less energy is consumed, and less hardware is strained. It leaves a positive impact on the environment making space for a healthy surrounding. 

According to a review assessment report by Science Direct,  between 1.5% and 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to the latest information and communication technologies. These results are enough to understand the importance of adapting sustainable coding practices. 

This article revolves around the green coding practices every developer must know. Also, it discusses the impact and importance of these practices in today’s world.

Top Green Coding Practices 

Optimise Your Code for Efficiency

According to experts, optimising your code is one of the simplest ways to reduce energy use. This is because an inefficient code takes a higher number of memory usage and CPU cycles along with extra power. It leads to a slow processing of applications while reading greater amounts of electricity. It negatively impacts operational devices, especially the ones running on battery.

Green Software Foundation states that an optimised algorithm can reduce energy usage by half and make it up to 50% in comparison to a brute force approach.  A few best practices to optimise your lines of code are discussed further.

•     Try to minimise the lines of code by applying nested conditions as CPU usage is majorly impacted by excessive loops.
•     Use algorithms that are time and space-efficient like preferring QuickSort in place of Bubble Sort. 
•     Keep away from redundant operations like unnecessary logic checks and function calls. 
•     Cache results as they help to perform repeat calculations. 

Reduce Data Transfers and HTTP Requests

When you transfer data over different networks, a huge amount of energy is consumed with every process.  To reduce this energy consumption, you can compress data before transfer by using formats like Brotli or GZIP. Because smaller files load faster, experts recommend the minification of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files. 

You can also implement lazy loading and limit the number of API calls using batch requests.  According to a report! by a website carbon calculator from 2021, the average amount of carbon dioxide produced by a website for every view is estimated at least 17.6g.

However, owners can reduce this amount by half once they optimise the pages of their websites.

Write Clean and Maintainable Code

Having a clear and clean code offers plenty of benefits for the application and the development team. Besides being easier to understand, it makes sure to reduce the number of resources required to compile and execute it. According to experts, developers must prevent the usage of unnecessary libraries to generate this type of code.

The next thing you can do Is to get rid of unused variables, deadlines of code, and useless functions.  When naming conventions in your application, try to be consistent as it boosts readability and encourages updates. Developers must understand that having clean code keeps away from the chances of rewriting the entire code or different portions of it.

Use Efficient Data Structures

The amount of power used by applications and websites to process can also be controlled by selecting an appropriate data structure. Experts recommend the use of hash maps and arrays instead of lists and linked lists for faster search operations and fixed-size collections respectively.

According to the report by IEEE Spectrum in 2023, Having an optimised data structure enhances application efficiency do more than 30%. It is why, it is better to implement queues or stacks for better memory and power usage.

Choosing the right data structure can significantly affect how much memory and processing power your application uses.

Implement Energy-Efficient Design Patterns

Utilisation of the right design patterns is beneficial in plenty of ways for the application and development process. Besides improving the organisation of code, it helps to manage resource usage easily. Some popular green-friendly patterns include object pooling, asynchronous programming, and lazy initialisation.

We have also described each of these to help our readers.

•    Object Pooling: It is the pattern in which the application reuses objects rather than creating new ones for every process.
•    Asynchronous Programming: In this pattern, the system idles energy consumption and reduces the waiting time of the application.
•    Lazy Initialisation: This pattern helps to delay the creation of new objects unless it becomes absolutely necessary for the application.

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Deploy to Sustainable Hosting Providers

Reports suggest that choosing the right hosting partners can also significantly impact the energy consumption of an application.  You may be astonished to know that Google Cloud claims to operate using 100% renewable energy. Similarly, Microsoft Azure has plans to turn carbon-negative by the year 2030.

Website owners must try to look for data centres that are powered by renewable energy for green development. Also, developers can try to utilise energy-efficient hardware infrastructure. Most importantly, carbon-neutral certifications are considered a great option.

Adopt Continuous Performance Monitoring

Performance one-thing tools are a great way to track the amount of energy your software or application can consume in real-time.  Experts recommend using tools like New Relic and Dynatrace for general performance monitoring. Professionals looking to measure the total amount of app energy usage can also use Power API.

Real-time insights are the finest way to analyse any application or software in terms of all the bottlenecks. This leads to a sustainable improvement in any project during development.

Use Serverless Architecture When Applicable

Having a serverless architecture is a form of computing where you can run different lines of code without managing servers. It is a great way to improve resource usage and enhance the scalability of an application. The benefit of this type of computing consists of a smaller carbon footprint in comparison to traditional hosting servers.

Moreover, you do not have to worry about resources as they scale automatically according to the demand of the project.  Interestingly, Google Cloud Functions and AWS Lambda are the finest examples of such architecture.

Encourage Dark Mode and Energy-Efficient UI

Developers are well aware of the fact that user interface directly impacts energy consumption. It happens especially while using OLED screens, due to which experts recommend using dark mode. According to studies, dark pixels consume less energy and reduce battery drainage on smartphones and other devices by more than 60%.

Moreover, to make your user interface energy efficient, you can try to reduce animation complexity and enable low-power settings where possible. Developers can also try to replace raster images with vector images for better results.

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Promote a Sustainable Coding Culture

Developers must understand that green coding is not just about a particular professional. It requires a team effort to implement a sustainable coding culture in the market. To try to promote awareness and training among your team members in the following ways.

•    Try to arrange internal workshops about green coating and educate others.
•    Share and invest in tools and metrics that can help to evaluate energy consumption.
•    Decide different goals for the development team with benefits for energy-efficient projects.

According to a recent study, organisations that pay attention to sustainable technology are estimated to experience 10% faster revenue growth as compared to others in the market.

Final Thoughts

Do not consider green coding as a market trend attracting tech geeks or environment lovers. Consider it as a commitment to your planet as it can greatly impact the entire ecosystem.  Introducing efficient lines of code can contribute to a greener digital future. 
In the future, we expect to see more applications with reduced carbon emissions. It may also lead to better, faster, and more scalable projects. As a responsible professional in the web development industry, make sure to implement green coding practices every time you work. Start playing your part today and encourage others to do the same!