Hacker News Reader

Looks very cool––what kind of performance hit is introduced by logging every event?

It's essentially imperceptible. We measured it, and our client-side script introduces a 0.1% CPU overhead.

I don't think anyone is concerned about the CPU overhead. (Also, let's not talk about measuring things without defining exactly what was measured. On a blank page I'm sure your JS runs great.)

How does it affect network performance? If I click a link and it takes me to another page, how do you track that?

Good point. In terms of network performance, we try to batch events and minimize server requests.

For link tracking, our method is similar to how other analytics products track link clicks - we delay the page navigation the min of: 1) 250ms, 2) the time it takes for our server to respond to a click event.

>we delay the page navigation the max of: 1) 250ms, 2) the time it takes for our server to respond to a click event.

So if your server takes 10 seconds to respond to a click event, the user waits?

Oh, whoops. Good catch. That should be min, not max.

I think he meant max (timeout) is 250ms or sooner if the server responds in < 250ms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com