Developers want more efficient software. Here’s what over 1000 GitHub users told us they need.

Let's be real: for years, "efficient software" was the punchline of every performance-obsessed greybeard's rant, while the rest of the industry happily threw another 16-core VM at a cron job. This GitHub/Yale research is a shot across the bow for every cloud bill that's spiraling out of control. Over 1,000 developers said they want better tools, measurement, and guidance to reduce wasted compute — and that's not a niche ask, that's a mandate. The fact that this data comes from GitHub users, not just enterprise architects, tells you the demand is bubbling up from the trenches. The interesting angle here is the collaboration with Yale's Program on Climate Change Communication. That's not accidental. Efficiency is being reframed as a climate issue, but the smart move is that the report doesn't just guilt-trip developers. It focuses on what they need: better observability, clearer benchmarks, and practical workflows. That's the right approach. Developers don't respond to shame; they respond to tooling that makes their code faster and cheaper while also saving the planet. The open source community has a huge role to play here — from energy profiling tools to compiler flags that optimize for compute, the solutions are going to come from projects that treat efficiency as a first-class feature, not an afterthought. But let's not pretend this is purely altruistic. The cloud providers are watching this trend too, and they'll happily sell you "green compute" at a premium while their data centers still guzzle power. This survey is a wake-up call to the entire ecosystem: measure your waste, share your findings, and push for standards. The developers who adopt efficiency tooling now will be the ones laughing when the energy costs — and the regulatory pressure — inevitably ramp up. Source: [The GitHub Blog](https://github.blog/news-insights/research/developers-want-more-efficient-software-heres-what-over-1000-github-users-told-us-they-need/)