Question

time_limit = gets.to_f * 60
start_time = Time.new
end_time = start_time + time_limit
x = 1
until Time.new >= end_time
  time_left = end_time - Time.new
  time_left_in_minutes = time_left / 60
  puts "Minutes Left: #{time_left_in_minutes}"
end
until x == 0
puts "Time Since End of #{time_limit / 60} Minutes: #{Time.new - end_time}"
end

My computer fan spins up to full speed and my computer gets noisy running this code. Is there a better way to do this that isn’t as much work for a processor?

Answer 1

This is happening because you’re asking your processor to do a lot of work!

Look at your loop:

until Time.new >= end_time
  time_left = end_time - Time.new
  time_left_in_minutes = time_left / 60
  puts "Minutes Left: #{time_left_in_minutes}"
end

That just spins and spins and spins until the time limit is reached. Your processor just keeps going and going. (You’re also doing some things which are expensive in here – you call Time.new twice on each iteration, and object creation can be expensive – but if your loop was faster you’d just spin faster.)

You probably need to add a delay in that loop, so that it only runs once a second, or once a minute, or something like that. sleep 30 will pause for 30 seconds, for instance.