[Python-Dev] The endless GIL debate: why not remove thread support instead? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sat Dec 13 17:14:57 CET 2008

Yes, this is what threads were designed for. As an abstraction to have multiple "threads of control" on a single processor (in a single process). The whole multi-core business came decades later. (Classic multi-processors have something called threads too, but they, too, came later than the original single-core-single-CPU thread concept, and often threads on those systems have properties that don't match how threads work on modern multi-core CPUs.)

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 5:32 AM, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:

Lennart Regebro wrote:

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 02:13, Sturla Molden <sturla at molden.no> wrote:

I genuinely think the use of threads should be discouraged. It leads to code that are full of bugs and difficult to maintain - race conditions, deadlocks, and livelocks are common pitfalls. The use of threads for load balancing should be discouraged, yes. That is not what they are designed for. Threads are designed to allow blocking processes to go on in the background without blocking the main process. This, they are very useful for. Removing thread support would therefore be a very big mistake. It's needed, it has it's uses, just not the one you want. That's an interesting assertion about what threads were designed for. Do you have anything to back it up? Michael -- http://www.ironpythoninaction.com/ http://www.voidspace.org.uk/blog

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-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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