Every architecture decision carries a sustainability trade-off. A greener data center may sit farther from users, increasing latency. Going serverless eliminates idle compute waste but introduces cold starts and the complexity of maintaining multiple functions.
At Devoxx Belgium, I presented “How to Architect Green Software”, exploring the trade-offs between sustainability and the other “-ilities” (maintainability, portability, availability, performance) and presenting practical techniques to reduce energy use, carbon footprint, and operating costs.
One of the key insights: AI coding agents are changing established trade-offs in software architecture. Have you thought about revisiting past architectural decisions?
For example, running your application on ARM-based processors can reduce cloud costs and energy use.
However, porting applications to ARM processors can require considerable development effort, especially for legacy applications.
Trade-off: Porting effort vs. Savings in cloud costs and energy use
Until recently, many developers avoided ARM processors because of the porting effort. Nowadays, AI coding agents can reduce that effort substantially.
Software architecture trade-offs are not set in stone.
Watch my talk to learn about more cases where the trade-offs are changing thanks to AI coding agents.