If you're going that route, I'd focus on small & cheap SBCs. A bare, credit card sized ARM computer is probably going to be more ecological (both in manufacture and operation) than an Intel PC.
Yes, and I do just that where I can. One of my home servers is exactly an ARM SBC and I am very happy to see it idle at <5W.
(Also pondering moving my NAS to an ARM SBC as well but not sure it's worth the hassle since the mini Intel i3 PC idles at 10W.)
For work however, a programmer just can't do with those underpowered machines if they want to be productive and not wait 3 minutes for incremental compilation after each change they make (which an LSP server does, and even if it didn't, re-running tests does the same anyway).
I am happy to work on a more ecological machine if somebody optimizes the dev tooling and my programming languages' of choice compilers and linkers. I'd absolutely love it if all my machines idled at 5W and peaked at 35W. But if I am to support my family, that stance isn't easily achievable today. Yet.
(Also pondering moving my NAS to an ARM SBC as well but not sure it's worth the hassle since the mini Intel i3 PC idles at 10W.)
For work however, a programmer just can't do with those underpowered machines if they want to be productive and not wait 3 minutes for incremental compilation after each change they make (which an LSP server does, and even if it didn't, re-running tests does the same anyway).
I am happy to work on a more ecological machine if somebody optimizes the dev tooling and my programming languages' of choice compilers and linkers. I'd absolutely love it if all my machines idled at 5W and peaked at 35W. But if I am to support my family, that stance isn't easily achievable today. Yet.