dual processor

[Jeremy Jones]

Michael Sparks wrote:

>Jeremy Jones wrote:
>  
>
<snip>

>  
>
>>And maybe  
>>Steve's magical thinking programming language will have a ton of merit.
>>    
>>
>
>I see no reason to use such derisory tones, though I'm sure you didn't mean
>it that way. (I can see you mean it as extreme skepticism though :-)
>  
>
None of the above, really.  I thought it was a really great idea and 
worthy of pursuit.  In my response back to Steve, the most skeptical 
thing I said was that I think it would be insanely difficult to 
implement.  Maybe it wouldn't be as hard as I think.  And according to a 
follow-up by Steve, it probably wouldn't.

<snip>

>>I would almost bet money that the majority of code would 
>>not be helped by that at all.  
>>    
>>
>
>Are you so sure? I suspect this is due to you being used to writing code
>that is designed for a single CPU system. 
>
Not really.  I've got a couple of projects in work that would benefit 
tremendously from the GIL being lifted.  And one of them is actually 
evolving into a funny little hack that will allow easy persistent 
message passing between processes (on the same system) without having to 
mess around with networking.  I'm betting this is the case just because 
of reading this list, the tutor list, and interaction with other Python 
programmers. 

<snip>

>That's my point too. I don't think our opinions really diverge that far :)
>  
>
We don't.  Again (as we have both stated), as systems find themselves 
with more and more CPUs onboard, it becomes more and more absurd to have 
to do little hacks like what I allude to above.  If Python wants to 
maintain its position in the pantheon of programming languages, it 
really needs to 1) find a good clean way to utilize muti-CPU machines 
and 2) come up with a simple, consistent, Pythonic concurrency paradigm.

>Best Regards,
>
>
>Michael.
>
>  
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Good discussion.


JMJ