[nerdponx]

Of course there isn't. Software is developed by people.

But consider that maybe it wasn't a sloppy design at all. For decades, the explicitly stated philosophy of the CPython development team was to prioritize simplicity of implementation over performance. I don't think anyone ever envisioned Python becoming the wild success that it is today.

That is, the GIL wasn't sloppy at all. It was perfectly reasonable and pragmatic decision that made sense given the tradeoffs of the time.