Python's biggest compromises

[enoch]

anthony_barker at hotmail.com (Anthony_Barker) wrote in message news:<899f842.0307310555.56134f71 at posting.google.com>...
> I have been reading a book about the evolution of the Basic
> programming language. The author states that Basic - particularly
> Microsoft's version is full of compromises which crept in along the
> language's 30+ year evolution.
> 
> What to you think python largest compromises are?

Its non existant SMP scalability.
If you try to sell clients somewhat bigger server apps, they don't
want to hear that having these run on a SMP system might (and will)
actually _hurt_ performance without special administrative
interference  (processor binding), which isn't even possible on some
older operating systems.
We seem to be more or less at the end concerning ramping up single
processor speeds, and SMP like hardware becomes more and more
ubiquitous, e.g. Intel's Hyperthreading, IBM's SMP-on-a-chip, Sun's
"Throughput Computing".
As far as I know, there seems to be no interest to get rid of the GIL.
To do this might be a big technical problem, but I fear if it stays
the way it is, the actual trend in the hardware industry might work
against python (in server apps) big time.