Benchmark: Date.now vs setTimeout

Tests:

Date.now
const timestamp = Date.now()
setTimeout
const handle = setTimeout(() => { this.shouldRestart = true; }, 1000 * 60 * 5);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Date.now
setTimeout

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 25 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.1.1 Safari/605.1.15

Browser/OS: Safari 18 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Date.now	12747565.0 Ops/sec
setTimeout	374193.6 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 2 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark and explain what is being tested, compared, and their pros and cons.

**What is being tested?**

Two different approaches are being compared: `Date.now()` and `setTimeout()`. The test aims to measure which one is faster in terms of executing a block of code within a specified time frame (5 minutes).

**Options compared**

* **`Date.now()`**: This function returns the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch (January 1, 1970). It's a simple and straightforward way to get the current timestamp.
* **`setTimeout()`**: This function schedules a callback function to be executed after a specified delay in milliseconds. In this test, it's used to schedule a block of code to run after a 5-minute delay.

**Pros and Cons**

* **`Date.now()`**:
	+ Pros: Simple, fast, and widely supported.
	+ Cons: May not provide the most accurate timestamp due to potential clock drift or system overhead.
* **`setTimeout()`**:
	+ Pros: Allows for more complex scheduling and callbacks, making it a popular choice for asynchronous programming.
	+ Cons: Introduces additional overhead due to the need to schedule and manage timers.

**Other considerations**

* The `Date.now()` function is likely to be faster because it doesn't require setting up a timer or waiting for an event to occur. It simply returns the current timestamp.
* The `setTimeout()` approach, on the other hand, requires setting up a timer, which may introduce additional overhead due to the need to manage timers and schedules.

**Library**

None of the test cases explicitly use any libraries. However, it's worth noting that `Date.now()` is a built-in function in JavaScript, while `setTimeout()` relies on the browser's or Node.js's implementation of the timer API.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

There are no special features or syntax used in these test cases. The code uses standard JavaScript syntax and doesn't employ any advanced features like async/await, promises, or decorators.

**Alternative approaches**

If you wanted to compare other approaches, some alternatives could be:

* Using `performance.now()` instead of `Date.now()`: This function returns the number of milliseconds since performance measurement began.
* Using `setInterval()` instead of `setTimeout()`: This function calls a block of code at regular intervals.

Keep in mind that these alternatives may have different overheads or characteristics, and the results might be affected accordingly.

Related benchmarks:

Date.now vs setTimeout (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Date.now vs setTimeout

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Date.now

setTimeout

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 2 months ago):