Developing and Deploying Software in a Sustainable Way

"Sustainable APIs benefit most from minimalism, Jochen Joswig said at OOP Conference. Deployment should consider energy, usage, carbon intensity, hardware acquisition. Remote work, long device lifespans, and green office practices can lower emissions. Efficient CI, selective builds, smaller artefacts, and optimized assets can further reduce energy use. DevGreenOps is an extension of the DevOps approach, in which environmental sustainability considerations are integrated into every step of the DevOps cycle. Applying transparency, minimalism, efficiency, and awareness, helps to design sustainable digital services."

"There are many ideas for ensuring the ecological sustainability of APIs, Joswig said. The API Thinking collective has an overview of best practices in their Sustainable API Green Score. Most of the practices fall into the transparency, minimalism, and efficiency categories. Joswig argued that projects will see the greatest benefits from practices in the minimalism category, like: "decommissioning unused APIs", "exchange with the smallest size", "optimize queries to limit returned information", or "collect only required data":"

"These best practices not only reduce the bandwidth, hardware resources and energy footprints of software providing the API, but they are also a clear indication of clean and well maintained code. The recommendations of "deploy API near consumers" and "Be near Data Centers" are among the most controversial, because they seem to contradict the idea of location shifting, Joswig said. But location shifting itself is also controversial; it might be less sustainable than it looks:"

DevGreenOps integrates environmental sustainability considerations into every step of the DevOps cycle and emphasizes transparency, minimalism, efficiency, and awareness. Minimalist API design delivers the largest sustainability gains through decommissioning unused APIs, minimizing payload sizes, optimizing queries to limit returned information, and collecting only required data. Operational measures include deploying APIs closer to consumers and to data centers, though location shifting can increase network load and leave resources underutilized. Organizational measures include remote work, longer device lifespans, and green office practices. Build and delivery improvements include efficient CI, selective builds, smaller artifacts, and optimized assets to further reduce energy use.

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