The results are what I have expected but yes, mandelbrot and n-body in Ruby? Ruby's typical workload is getting some strings from a web server, building a SQL query, sending it to a database, get a resultset, creating a bunch of objects to represent the result and send back another string to the web server. That would be more energy efficient if done in C but not as much as doing a mandelbrot.
Then factor in the energy of the developer and its supporting environment for the extra development time (commuting, air conditioning / heating, laptop, monitors, etc.) The less the load on the app, the more important it gets.
> Then factor in the energy of the developer and its supporting environment for the extra development time (commuting, air conditioning / heating, laptop, monitors, etc.) The less the load on the app, the more important it gets.
No, it's almost always negligible because it's essentially a one-time cost, whereas the program's inefficiencies are multiplied by an unknown number of users over an unknown period of time (cf. Cobol programs still being in use today) - but for sure your goal is often to maximize both of these unknown numbers.
This fact is very obvious when you develop hardware/firmware combos. The firmware is often designed to minimize the hardware costs (RAM size, mass storage size,...) because the cost of producing the hardware is per piece, while the development cost is mostly a one-time cost that one rarely includes in the total cost of the product.
Then factor in the energy of the developer and its supporting environment for the extra development time (commuting, air conditioning / heating, laptop, monitors, etc.) The less the load on the app, the more important it gets.