Status of Python threading support (GIL removal)?

[Carl Banks]

On Jun 20, 6:36 am, s... at pobox.com wrote:
>     Carl> Here's the thing: not everyone complaining about the GIL is trying
>     Carl> to get the "raw power of their machines."  They just want to take
>     Carl> advantage of multiple cores so that their Python program runs
>     Carl> faster.
>
> If their code is CPU-bound it's likely that rewriting critical parts in C or
> using packages like numpy would improve there performance with or without
> multi-threading.  For people who aren't used to C there are tools like Pyrex
> and Cython which provide a middle road.

Once again you miss the point.

I'm sure you think you're trying to be helpful, but you're coming off
as really presumptuous with this casual dismissal of their concerns.

There are many, many valid reasons why people don't want to stray from
Pure Python.  Converting to C, Fortran, Pyrex, etc. has a significant
cost (in both implementation and maintenance): much more than the cost
of parallelizing pure Python code.  I guess what really bothers me
about this is how easily people throw out "shut up and use C" for some
things, especially things that quite reasonably appear to be a silly
limitation.

Maybe you don't intend to sound like you're saying "shut up and use
C", but to me, that's how you come off.  If you're going to advise
someone to use C, at least try to show some understanding for their
concerns--it would go a long way.


Carl Banks