Will multithreading make python less popular?

[Andreas Kaiser]

On 16 Feb., 10:34, rushen... at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> I am an engineer. I am trying to improve my software development
> abilities. I have started programming with ruby. I like it very much
> but i want to add something more. According to my previous research i
> have designed a learning path for myself. It's like something below.
>       1. Ruby (Mastering as much as possible)
>       2. Python (Mastering as much as possible)
>       3. Basic C++ or Basic Java
> And the story begins here. As i search on the net,  I have found that
> because of the natural characteristics of python such as GIL, we are
> not able to write multi threaded programs. Oooops, in a kind of time
> with lots of cpu cores and we are not able to write multi threaded
> programs. That is out of fashion. How a such powerful language doesn't
> support multi threading. That is a big minus for python.

On comp.lang.ruby David Masover wrote this at 29 Jul. 2008, 07:55:
-----
Right now, Ruby shares a problem with Python called the GIL -- the
Global (or
Giant) Interpreter Lock. What this means is that only one Ruby
instruction
may execute at a time. So even though they're using separate OS
threads, and
even though different Ruby threads might run on different cores, the
speed of
your program (at least the Ruby part) is limited to the speed of a
single
core.
-----

Please don't mix threads and parallel processing on more then one CPU
core.

Andreas