How do you calculate program run time in python?

Quick alternative

import timeit

start = timeit.default_timer()

#Your statements here

stop = timeit.default_timer()

print('Time: ', stop - start)  

I don't know if this is a faster alternative, but I have another solution -

from datetime import datetime
start=datetime.now()

#Statements

print datetime.now()-start

You might want to take a look at the timeit module:

http://docs.python.org/library/timeit.html

or the profile module:

http://docs.python.org/library/profile.html

There are some additionally some nice tutorials here:

http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/profile/index.html

http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/timeit/index.html

And the time module also might come in handy, although I prefer the later two recommendations for benchmarking and profiling code performance:

http://docs.python.org/library/time.html