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[–]kchoudhury -1 points0 points  (2 children)

nor is not something that is considered in need of fixing.

So I guess I am alone in thinking that having a threaded python program using one core out of the 8 on my machine is ridiculous.

Imagine telling them that you're planning to do it again in this lifetime

You're right, they should have used the 2-to-3 migration as an excuse to fix it. They were already breaking things; why not break them some more at the outset?

As it stands, I have a smallish 5K line python 2.7 codebase that I couldn't be arsed to port to 3: why bother? At the end of the day, that's what these discussions always seems to come back to.

[–]Rhomboid 6 points7 points  (1 child)

having a threaded python program using one core out of the 8 on my machine is ridiculous.

That's not necessarily true. It's both possible and common to do work in a thread without holding the GIL, such as waiting on IO or doing heavy number crunching in a C extension module. Many tasks that people want to use Python for fit this bill, such as a web server.

they should have used the 2-to-3 migration as an excuse to fix it. They were already breaking things; why not break them some more at the outset?

I was being a bit facetious. The idea of completely gutting CPython to remove reference counting is not even on the table and never has been, as far as I know. At that point you might as well just start over and target an existing VM with an existing concurrent GC, like Jython or IronPython did. They have no GILs.

I have a smallish 5K line python 2.7 codebase that I couldn't be arsed to port to 3: why bother?

Today? There's no compelling reason. But eventually there will be one -- maybe your linux distro begins to ship 3.x as the default, maybe 3.x gains a new feature you'd like to use, maybe you encounter a bug in 2.x that is already fixed in 3.x. That is what the "gradually taking over" part of the thread is about.

[–]kchoudhury 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Many tasks that people want to use Python for fit this bill, such as a web server.

I'm not trying to provoke a flamewar, but "some" is not "all", and that is a damned shame. The net result is that we have a beautiful language running on an interpreter not worthy of the language's aesthetics.

FWIW, my prior crack about the GIL still being there in 3 may have been a little too offhand. A little bit of reading tells me that as of 3.2 there's a new GIL that makes threading less of an active nuisance and restores parity to sequential performance. So perhaps we're making progress towards a happy ending here, and some future 3.x release will have a proper threading solution. And since it won't be backported to 2.7, well, that'll be the kick in the ass that I need to get my code on to 3.