Duration calculation

The ability to calculate the duration of an execution comes in handy during many aspects of programming. In our everyday lives, we can monitor discrepancies and performance bottlenecks that our infrastructure might face. For example, if you have a script that takes only 5 seconds to complete on average and the monitoring execution time shows you a huge bump during certain hours of a day or certain days, it might be wise to investigate. The other aspect is related to web applications. Measuring the duration of request-response in your scripts can give you an insight into how well invested you are in your apps to serve high loads, and it even allows you to expand your capacity on certain days or weeks of the year. For example, if you have an online shop dealing with products, it might be wise to size your capacity according to patterns such as Black Friday or Christmas.

You may do well with a lower capacity during most of the year, but those holidays can result...