Nowadays, I'd agree. Back in the mid-80s when I was learning BASIC on my ZX Spectrum, not so much: there was no tooling. I mean you could, and I did, measure el

Nowadays, I'd agree. Back in the mid-80s when I was learning BASIC on my ZX Spectrum, not so much: there was no tooling. I mean you could, and I did, measure elapsed time, but you also had to experiment by tweaking the program. I suppose you were still measuring, but perhaps not in the way we'd mean when we say "measure" today. Nowadays, when I ask someone to measure something it's shorthand for, "your program is complicated: use a tool to help you." Back in the day it was easier: programs were simpler, and there was only one thing running on the CPU, and using devices attached to the system, at a time.