[Python-Dev] Threading in the Standard Library Tour Part II (original) (raw)

Bob Ippolito bob at redivi.com
Mon Aug 16 05:55:05 CEST 2004

On Aug 15, 2004, at 11:48 PM, Aahz wrote:

On Sun, Aug 15, 2004, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

All that being said, a few cautions are in order. Thread programming is difficult to get right. And, its overhead decreases total application performance. Also, multiple processors cannot boost performance because Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) precludes more than one thread from running in the interpreter at the same time (this was done to simplify re-entrancy issues). Another issue is that threading doesn't work with the event driven model used by most GUIs. Python threading certainly does work with GUIs, and while the GIL adds some difficulty, the overall simplicity of Python's thread model makes it easier to get threaded GUI programs correct. See the Tkinter example from my OSCON slides.

Many platform GUIs require that all or most all GUI activities be consolidated to one and only one thread. I don't think any of them 'care' if another thread is also running, but it can't communicate directly with the GUI.

-bob

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