"Jorgen Grahn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:39:57 -0700, Alex Martelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> A long time ago Greg Stein produced a patch that removed the need for > >> the GIL, but nobody seemed to want to pay the penalty it extracted in > >> speed reduction, so it languished unadopted. > > > > Perhaps the current wave of dual-core and quad-core CPUs in cheap > > consumer products would change people's perceptions -- I wonder... > > Maybe it would change /perceptions/, but would normal users suddenly > start running things that are (a) performance-critical, (b) written in > Python and (c) use algorithms that are possible to parallellize? > > I doubt it. (But I admit that I am a bit negative towards thread > programming in general, and I have whined about this before.) >
I find this last statement interesting, because it differs so much from my own attitude - getting a thread running was one of the first things I did when I started getting to grips with python. Do you mind "whining" some more - maybe I can learn something - threads seem to me to make a lot of things so much easier and more natural, as I see them as sequences that run "at the same time", and I find this immensely useful for all sorts of things, as it enables me to think in a simple linear fashion about parts of complicated things. And if you add queues, you have something in your hand that you can do quite fancy stuff with in a robust, simple manner... *grin* before I discovered the queue module, I was using named pipes to communicate between threads... So you could say I am a threading freak if you want to, and I won't argue. But I would like to hear the opposite viewpoint.. - Hendrik -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list