Will multithreading make python less popular?

[Paddy]

On Feb 16, 9:34 am, 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.

You are likely to find a lot of 'tick-list' type of comparison data on
the web that either needs a lot of knowledge to interpret, or is
misleading/wrong or all three!

Their are several versions of Python out their such as Ironpython,
Stackless Python, Jython as well as CPython - the main Python release.
They have different threading capabilities, but compilers of feature
comparison tick-lists tend to just stick to what CPython can do.

As an aside; if you were thinking of using threading for performance
reasons, then its best to first think of improving your general
ability to explore different algorithms. A change to an algorithm
often has the most impact on the performance of code. A better single
threaded, single process algorithm can offer better performaance than
throwing threadds or multiple processes alone when using a poor
underlying algorithm.

I was just exploring different ways of solving a problem on my blog:
  http://paddy3118.blogspot.com/2009/02/comparison-of-python-solutions-to.html
(But no parallel solutions were attempted).

Have fun programming!

- Paddy.