[Python-Dev] GIL, Python 3, and MP vs. UP (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Fri Sep 23 00:51:43 CEST 2005

"Bill Janssen" <janssen at parc.com> wrote in message news:05Sep22.141518pdt."58617"@synergy1.parc.xerox.com...

Sokolov Jura writes:

It is so simple to write application server in Python. It is so difficult to make it scallable in CPython. CPython will not be wide popular without real multithreading. He's right.

I think the post is at least somewhat wrong on both technical and topicalness levels.

On a technical level, the second statement seems wrong as an absolute statement. Phillip Eby claims that some application servers are easily scaled even if others are not. I suspect this is more likely to be the truth. In any case, the statement conveys no new technical information while to me it has the form and emotional load of a flame.

The third statement is an opinion about the indefinite future which is neither right nor wrong as it stands. To ever judge it so, we need an operational definition of 'wide popular' to guide measurement. By some standards, Python is already widely popular. By others, it never will be.

Guido already said that he will consider a high-quality maintainable 'real threading' patch that proves his scepticism wrong and that is neutral to beneficial to most all users, so I see little point in further flogging the issue, at least on this forum.

Terry J. Reedy

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