[fnord123]

>Python is fundamentally single threaded and slow

Python is not fundamentally single threaded - it just has a lock that stops it from taking advantage of threads in cpu bound scenarios.

Python is used in data science because of the C bindings that make it not slow. Also, when in C, you can take advantage of threads since they live outside the GIL. e.g. Dask.

[weberc2]

> Python is not fundamentally single threaded - it just has a lock that stops it from taking advantage of threads in cpu bound scenarios.

Tomato tomahto

> Python is used in data science because of the C bindings that make it not slow. Also, when in C, you can take advantage of threads since they live outside the GIL. e.g. Dask.

Correct. Python is fast when you aren’t running Python. Of course using C (or anything else) only works in certain situations—there is a cost to crossing the language boundary and very often that cost is greater than what you save by using C. Never mind the added build/package complexity, the security issues, the maintainability issues, etc.

Python is a neat language, but it’s really expensive if your project ever might have tight performance requirements (where “tight” is laughably easy for most other languages). Python can often be made to meet them with enough shenanigans, it’s just costly to implement and maintain said shenanigans.

[kissgyorgy]

> Python is not fundamentally single threaded

Yes it is. It is not designed to run fast on multi-core CPUs, because there were mostly single-core CPUs when Guido made the language. It has been always a problem since multi-core CPUs are more frequent and it's a front where Python is losing the battle (against Go for example because of way easier concurrency support).