[Tutor] measuring the start up time of an event-driven program

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

From: Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>

To: tutor at python.org 
>Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 11:48 AM
>Subject: Re: [Tutor] measuring the start up time of an event-driven program
> 
>On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 02:18:43AM -0700, Albert-Jan Roskam wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I would like to test how long it takes for two versions of the same 
>> program to start up and be ready to receive commands. The program is 
>> SPSS version-very-old vs. SPSS version-latest.
>
>I don't think this is a Python question. I think this is a "what tools 
>does my operating system provide for fine testing of process startup 
>time?" question.
>
>I'm not an expert, but I suspect that the answer will be, "none". Which 
>OS are you using?
>===> I am using Windows 7, but I'd find it interesting to hear about Linux tools too (though I couldn't use them in this particular case). Would be cool if such a tool could differentiate between the various processes involved. In this case stats.exe (frontend) and spssengine.exe (backend).
>
>If the SPSS app has the ability to run commands specified from a 
>script, and then automatically exit, perhaps you can approximate 
>start-up time as "start-up, run an empty script, and exit" time, 
>assuming that running the script and exiting will be negligible.
>
>===> Well, I actually do that too. But the full-fledged app has a GUI programmed in (I think) C++ (old version) or Java (new version). The latter is markedly slower. People work with the GUI based spss all the time. Only when their code is final, people *might* use the scripting facility.
>
>Or, if the app is slow enough (I'm looking at you Chrome, fastest way to 
>browse the web my arse) perhaps you could just time it with a 
>stop-watch.
>
>===> ;-))) Yeah, good idea (I mean the stop-watch, not Chrome --I don't like Google's information obesity).
>
>> I want to know how long the user on average needs to wait before he 
>> can start doing analyses in SPSS. If it takes way much longer in the 
>> new version, the user might be more inclined not to close the program 
>> after use, which may lead to a lack of concurrent licenses.
>
>If you have to measure the difference to notice the difference, the 
>average user won't notice the difference.
>
>===> Good point. But it is noticeable, and now I'd like to quantify that. Something like: "ceteris paribus it takes 2.2 times longer to start up the new version, as compared with the old version"
>
>==> And of course: Thanks!
>
>-- 
>Steven
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