Will multithreading make python less popular?

[Steven D'Aprano]

Paul Rubin wrote:

> How old is your computer, why did you buy it, and is it the first one
> you ever owned?
> 
> For most of us, I suspect, it is not our first one, and we bought it
> to get a processing speedup relative to the previous one. 

My computer is about eight months old, and I bought it because the previous
one died.


> If such 
> speedups were useless or unimportant, we would not have blown our hard
> earned cash replacing perfectly good older hardware, 

Oh the assumptions in that statement...

"Blowing hard-earned cash" assumes that people buy computers only when they
need to. That's certainly not true -- there's a lot of irrational purchases
involved. I have a friend who has just recently spent $2000 on storage so
he can store more games and videos, which he cheerfully admits he'll never
play or watch. He describes it as his "dragon's horde": it is for knowing
it's there, not for using.

Often hardware is upgraded because it's broken, or because you can't get
parts, or because the software you need will only run on newer machines. I
say *newer* rather than *faster*, because speed is only sometimes a factor
in why software won't run on old machines. My old Mac running a 68030 in
1990 ran Microsoft Word perfectly fast enough for even advanced word
processing needs, and nearly twenty years later, there's nothing I need
from a word processor that I couldn't do in 1990.


> so we have to 
> accept the concept that speed matters and ignore those platitudes that
> say otherwise.

The *perception* that speed matters, matters. The reality is that the
majority of computing tasks outside of certain specialist niches are I/O
bound, not CPU. Office server software is rarely CPU bound, and when it is,
in my experience there's one rogue process using all the CPU: the software
is broken, and a faster CPU would just let it be broken at a faster speed.

Gamers need better graphics cards and more memory, not faster CPUs. Internet
surfers need faster ethernet, more bandwidth and more memory, not faster
CPUs. Graphics designers need bigger hard drives and more memory, not
faster CPUs. (Hmm. There seems to be a pattern there...)

Of course, there are a few niches that do require faster CPUs: video
editing, some (but by no means all) Photoshop filters, number crunching,
etc. But even for them, you can often get more bang-for-your-buck
performance increase by adding more memory.

Speaking for myself, I'd happily take a 20% slower CPU for more reliable,
faster DVD/CD burning. What do I care if it takes my computer 120ms to open
a window instead of 100ms, but I care a lot if it takes me 10 minutes to
make a coaster instead of 7 minutes to make a good disc.



-- 
Steven