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Issue with Go's time.Ticker Not Triggering Expected Interval in High-Load Environment

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-08-22
go concurrency time ticker Go

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm facing an issue with the `time.Ticker` in Go where it seems to skip ticks under high load conditions... Specifically, I'm using Go version 1.19. I have a service that processes incoming data every second, and I'm relying on a ticker to trigger an action for each incoming message. Hereโ€™s a simplified version of my code: ```go package main import ( "fmt" "time" ) func main() { ticker := time.NewTicker(1 * time.Second) defer ticker.Stop() go func() { for range ticker.C { fmt.Println("Tick at:", time.Now()) } }() for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { // Simulate a high workload time.Sleep(1 * time.Second) fmt.Println("Processing message:", i) } } ``` In a real-world scenario, Iโ€™m processing more than just 10 messages, and during peak load, I notice that the output from the ticker often gets missed or delayed. Sometimes I see no ticks logged for several seconds, even though I can see the processing messages being printed. This leads me to believe that the ticker might be getting starved or blocked. I've tried increasing the load by adding more processing logic inside the loop, but that doesnโ€™t seem to cause the expected behavior. I also checked for goroutine leaks and ensured that my processing function is lightweight. Is there a recommended pattern or best practice for using `time.Ticker` in high-load scenarios, or is there something I'm overlooking that could be causing this issue? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! This is part of a larger application I'm building. Thanks in advance! My development environment is Windows. Is there a better approach?