Comments on: Can Code be Green? Does Beauty Matter?

By: James Governor

James Governor — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:37:44 +0000

wait i just realised. carl kessler is commenting here. bot not on my blog! bah humbug carl… but i think you make a great point

By: James Governor

James Governor — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:36:13 +0000

Holy API efficiency batman this is turning into an awesome discussion. Sweet – i have some twitter back channel feedback too. thanks Cote.

By: Danno

Danno — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:15:18 +0000

As someone who programs in a dialect of APL: It really just takes a month or two to start appreciating it.

It helps if you work on large, mostly regular data sets.

It’s also as fast as hell.

By: cote

cote — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:43:35 +0000

Carl: nice slipping in of APL

By: Carl Kessler

Carl Kessler — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:45:55 +0000

Beautiful code should be understandable by others. This allows them to figure out if it works and to fix it when they find out it doesn't. It should be elegant – which is to say, attractive to the eye and appropriate to purpose. You know it when you see it.

I take exception to the notion that beautiful Ada code will look like crap to a Java programmer, etc. Even if the Java programmer doesn't write Ada, she should be able to get a sense of what's going on in the code.

Yes, perhaps no one but an APL programmer can see beauty in that language, but for most folks, clean and elegant code garners respect, even if in a foreign tongue.

By: Tarus

Tarus — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:44:20 +0000

There are many different flavors of efficiency to be considered, but working in an open source development shop I argue that beautiful code (well organized, streamlined, reusable and commented) is in the long term green simply because more people can reuse it. Also the effort can be spent on improving the existing code versus having to start from scratch.

I'm not sure that beautiful code is more efficient at the microeconomic level of "watts per execution" versus, say, machine level code, but the total cost when all the externalities are accounted for should be less over time.