The Hidden Costs of Code: What Fortran Taught Me About Resource Efficiency and Climate Impact

How decades-old lessons in programming thriftiness could help us tackle the growing carbon footprint of modern machine learning and data centers

I have a confession to make: I'm not a classically trained programmer—I’m more of a hack. I didn’t go to school for computer science; instead, I studied civil engineering. Did I learn some programming back in those dark ages? Yes, I learned Fortran77 and promptly forgot it the moment I graduated.

Once I started working in the "real world," I picked up pr…