Final answer:
Sustainable code writing aims to optimize for speed and efficiency, minimize code complexity, and encourage code reusability. These practices lead to the creation of maintainable software that aligns with sustainable development goals, ensuring software contributes minimally to environmental impact while meeting developmental needs.
Step-by-step explanation:
When writing code with sustainability in mind, the goals include optimizing for speed and efficiency, minimizing code complexity, and encouraging code reusability. As a software engineer, to develop maintainable software, one should aim for efficient use of resources, which contributes to the sustainability of the software and reduces environmental impact. Creating clean, understandable, and manageable code decreases the time and resources spent on future development, while code reusability allows for the conservation of resources by avoiding the need to create new code from scratch.
In simplest terms:
- Optimize for speed and efficiency - Write code that performs tasks in the most efficient manner possible, reducing the computational power required and hence energy consumption.
- Minimize code complexity - Simpler code is easier to maintain, understand, and fix, which leads to a longer useful life and adaptability to future needs.
- Encourage code reusability - Design software in a modular way so that parts of it can be reused in different projects, reducing the overall amount of code needed and the environmental load of software development.
By focusing on these principles, software engineers can contribute to the larger goal of sustainable development, as outlined by the National Resource Council (NRC, 1999), by aligning developmental goals with environmental limits.