how to benchmark the speed of an app

what is the best way to benchmark the speed of apps, say time how fast an app runs to completion? Is there a universal way to time an app runs to completion for both interpreted and compiled languages?

pseudo-code

TimerManager mng = new TimerManager();
Timer timer = TimerManager.getNewTimer();
timer.setTime(TimerManager.getCurrentTime(timer))
//code
timer.getTimeElapsed()

this is the ENTERPRISE way