Abstract
Sustainable computing is a rapidly growing research area spanning several areas of computer science. In the software engineering field, the topic has received increasing attention in recent years, with several studies addressing a range of concerns. However, few studies have demonstrated the awareness of software practitioners about the underlying concepts of sustainability in the software development practice. In this effect, this study aims to provide some evidence regarding the practitioners’ perception about the adoption of sustainability in software development, under four main perspectives: economic, social, environmental, and technical. In previous work, we carried out a preliminary survey study with twenty-five software engineers who work in a range of domains. The yielded results indicate an overall lack of knowledge about the topic, in particular, related to concepts about sustainable software. In this study, we extend the survey and reached a number of ninety-seven respondents. The novel results confirmed the evidence raised in the original survey that sustainability in the context of software is a new subject for software practitioners. However, professionals have shown interest in it. There is a general understanding that sustainability should be treated as a quality attribute. Among the observed perspectives, we generated an initial theory, which shows that software practitioners know the subject around ‘Green in Software’, even unconsciously. This study contributes to the green and sustainable software engineering field by bringing evidence on comprehending how the software industry understands the adoption of sustainability in the software development process.
Highlights
Sustainability has been increasingly discussed in the Software Engineering (SE) field (Mourão et al, 2018)
The SE community has increased its interest in the Green and Sustainable SE field, the software industry has not explored this area in an adequate fashion yet
This study is an extended survey from a previous work designed to gather data from software practitioners from Brazilian companies in this respect, and provide data on the software industry’s perception of sustainability in the software development process
Summary
Sustainability has been increasingly discussed in the Software Engineering (SE) field (Mourão et al, 2018). As more and more software applications are launched in the market as a means to make daily activities easier, there is an increased interest in understanding how such solutions might affect the environment. Whereas the technology helps organizations address environmental issues when providing many improvements (e.g., virtual meetings and improvements in logistics), it is often responsible for environmental degradation by consuming amounts of energy through engineering processes used to make products, for instance (Calero and Piattini, 2017). Developing, maintaining, and evolving energy-efficient software solutions is rather challenging (Pinto and Castor, 2017). The software development life-cycle is not suitable for identifying the effects of the software system on sustainability (Dick et al, 2010). Sustainable thinking is still a new and challenging practice for software engineers and developers
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
