Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Good for Guido!
  2005-12-22 05:33:07  Fuzzyman [View]
  
  
  The last person who tried to get rid of the GIL ended up *slowing* cPython considerably.
  
  Last discussion I saw concluded that the GIL makes threaded programming considerably easier.
  
  A decent interprocess communication protocol would do more for solving the 'Python programs on multi-processor systems' IMHO.
• Good for Guido!
  2005-12-22 14:21:04  gstein [View]
  
  
  Yeah... I was that last person. I got rid of the GIL in Python 1.4. It introduced a lot of lock contention around other data structures. With further work, I imagine it could have been fixed, but Python is a lot more complicated nowadays. No way would I try it again.
  
  As for whether this will be good for Python? I'd say "yes", as a significant portion of Guido's time is dedicated to working on Python. Much more than the 'day a week' at his previous employers.