[Python-ideas] Python 3000 TIOBE -3%

[Sturla Molden]

On 09.02.2012 19:42, Mike Meyer wrote:

> If threading is the only acceptable concurrency mechanism, then Python
> is the wrong language to use. But you're also not building scaleable
> systems, which is most of where it really matters. If you're willing
> to consider things other than threading - and you have to if you want
> to build scaleable systems - then Python makes a good choice.

Yes or no... Python is used for parallel computing on the biggest 
supercomputers, monsters like Cray and IBM blue genes with tens of 
thousands of CPUs. But what really fails to scale is the Python module 
loader! For example it can take hours to "import numpy" for 30,000 
Python processes on a blue gene. And yes, nobody would consider to use 
Java for such systems, even though Java does not have a GIL (well, 
theads do no matter that much on a cluster with distributed memory 
anyway). It is Python, C and Fortran that are popular. But that really 
disproves that Python sucks for big concurrency, except perhaps for the 
module loader.

Sturla