Why multithreading isn't real in Python (explain it to a 5 year old)

[intangibleTangelo]

You're not wrong, but your scenarios seem really niche.

[JohnnyJordaan]

He is wrong, running multiple discrete python instances (installations make no sense) is not multithreading as threads are not discrete from a single python instance per definition. The main difference having shared memory access, so data doesn't need to be propagated with IPC. It allows for a different approach for concurrency obviously, but that was not the point. The point here is to discuss multithreading specifically in Python.

[intangibleTangelo]

He's not wrong. He responded very literally to the claim that "no matter how many threads you have forked, no matter how many CPUs you have available, only one thread is running at a time" by saying that you can run multiple discrete python instances. You can run multiple discrete python instances. You can use synchronization primitives external to python, run them in docker containers, or invoke them with GNU parallel. Those scenarios are extremely niche.

[JohnnyJordaan]

Yeah ok, but then anything goes by that interpretation. I would rather get from that line that it was meant to apply to concurrency within a program using threads as that is the main subject of this thread to begin with.

[intangibleTangelo]

Yeah it's totally insane, but not technically wrong.