That the API support is awkward is not so important as that the functionality is at least accessible. Someone can always soup up a lackluster API (or, more like

That the API support is awkward is not so important as that the functionality is at least accessible. Someone can always soup up a lackluster API (or, more likely, find a third-party library that has already done so for them), but elements of the core language implementation like the GIL are not so easily hand-waved away, as anyone who has followed Python's GIL saga knows. Like I said, your argument is totally valid, and I don't contest it. It's not that most applications really need native threads, or that people are choosing the best alternatives for threaded applications. It's just that people don't want to use a language that will obstruct access to OS-native threading should they decide they need it, partially because it's hard to accurately anticipate all of an application's needs ahead of time.