The Future of Python Threading

[Cameron Laird]

In article <1186807396.988368.201400 at b79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
Seun Osewa  <seun.osewa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think I've heard Guido say the last attempt at removing the Global
>> Interpreter Lock (GIL) resulted in a Python that was much slower...
>
>What is it about Python that makes a thread-safe CPython version much
>slower?  Why doesn'ttrue threading slow down other languages like Perl
>and Java?
>
>I'm thinking it might be the reference counting approach to memory
>management... but what do you guys think is the reason?
>

Crudely, Perl threading is fragile, and Java requires
coding at a lower level.

Memory management is indeed important, and arguably 
deserves at least as much attention as multi-core
accomodations.  I know of no easy gains from here
on, just engineering trade-offs.