Will multithreading make python less popular?

[Christian Heimes]

Mensanator wrote:
> When I run I Python program, the Windows task manager shows both
> cores running (usually a 60/40 split) for an overall 50% usage.
> 
> What am I actually seeing? If Python only uses one of the cores,
> why do both light up? Is everything much more complicated (due to
> OS scheduling, etc.) than the simple explanations of GIL?

A Python *program* can utilize more than one core, just Python *code*
can't run on multiple cores in parallel. Everytime a C function calls
code that doesn't use the Python API it can chose to release the GIL.
That way a Python program can wrap a library and use as many cores as
possible.

Christian