Question

In a web app which I’m building, I have two loosely related bits of code running in two separate timers every one second.

I’m looking to optimize the Javascript, is it worth merging these two timers into one or is that just over the top?

Realistically, am I going to increase any performance (considering that we don’t know what sort a system a visitor is running ) by merging two 1 second intervals into one 1 second interval?

As I understand it, JavaScript is single threaded so the more things happening, the more these stack up and block other things from happening (timers especially). I just don’t know whether one measly timer running every second is an issue at all.

The reason for keeping the two timers separate would purely be code readability, which is fine on the server side where you control the hardware but I don’t know what sort of browser or hardware my visitors will be running.

Thanks.

Answer 1

In terms of the overall number of operations that can be completed, no, there isn’t going to be a measurable difference. It is possible for there to be a perceived performance advantage in keeping multiple timers, however. The more code you have running synchronously in a single timer iteration, the longer all DOM updates and certain types of user interactions are “halted”. By splitting these up into multiple timers, you allow other updates to take place in between timer iterations, and therefore the user gets a “smoother” experience.

Odds are in this case there won’t even be a difference in perceived performance either, though, so I’d do it whichever way makes the code organization simpler.