[hunterpayne]

So its the worst of all possible worlds then. It has the poorest performance due to forced locking even when not necessary and if you load a library in another language (C), then you can still get corruptions. If you really care about performance, probably best to avoid Python entirely, even when its compiled like it is in CPython.

PS For extra fun, learn what the LD_PRELOAD environmental variable does and how it can be used to abuse CPython (or other things that dynamically load shared objects).

[rogerbinns]

It is multiple fine grained locking versus a single global lock. The latter lets you do less locking, but only have a single thread of execution at a time. The former requires more locking but allows multiple concurrent threads of execution. There is no free lunch. But hardware has become parallel so something has to be done to take advantage of that. The default Python remains the GIL version.

The locking is all about reading and writing Python objects. It is not applicable to outside things like external libraries. Python objects are implemented in C code, but Python users do not need to know or care about that.

As a Python user you cannot corrupt or crash things by code you write no matter how hard you try with mutation and concurrency. The locking ensures that. Another way of looking at Python is that it is a friendly syntax for calling code written in C, and that is why people use it - the C code can be where all the performance is, while retaining the ergonomic access.

C code has to opt in to free threading - see my response to this comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706331

It is true that more fine grained locking can end up being done than is strictly necessary, but user's code is loaded at runtime, so you don't know in advance what could be omitted. And this is the beginning of the project - things will get better.

Aside: Yes you can use ctypes to crash things, other compiled languages can be used, concurrency is hard

[int_19h]

It depends on how you define "corruption". You can't get a torn read or write, or mess up a collection to the point where attempts to use it will segfault, sure. You can still end up with corrupt data in a sense of not upholding the expected logic invariants, which is to say, it's still corrupt for any practical purpose (and may in turn lead to taking code paths that are not supposed to ever happen etc).

[int_19h]

A library written in another language would have a Python extension module wrapping it, which would still hold the GIL for the duration of the native call (it can be released, but this is opt-in not opt-out), so that is usually not the issue with this arrangement.

The bigger problem is that it teaches people dangerously misguided notions such as "I don't need to synchronize if I work with built-in Python collections". Which, of course, is only true if a single guaranteed-atomic operation on the collection actually corresponds to a single logical atomic operation in your algorithm. What often happens is people start writing code without locks and it works, so they keep doing it until at some point they do something that actually requires locking (like atomic remove from one collection & add to another) without realizing that they have crossed a line.

Interestingly, we've been there before, multiple times even. The original design of Java collections entailed implicit locking on every operation, with the same exact outcome. Then .NET copied that design in its own collections. Both frameworks dropped it pretty fast, though - Java in v1.2 and .NET in v2.0. But, of course, they could do it because the locking was already specific to collections - it wasn't a global lock used for literally every language object, as in Python.

[Demiurge]

> If you really care about performance, probably best to avoid Python entirely

This has been true forever. Nothing more needs to be said. Please, avoid Python.

On the other hand, I’ve never had issues with Python performance, in 20 years of using it, for all the reasons that have been beaten to death.

It’s great that some people want to do some crazy stuff to CPython, but honestly, don’t hold your breath. Please don’t use Python if Python interpreter performance is your top concern.

[AlphaSite]

It’s another step in the right direction. These things take time.

[ReflectedImage]

Arguably, it's a step in the wrong direction. Share memory by communicating is already doable in Python with Pipe() and Queue() and side steps the issue entirely.