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Why has the Python community not removed the GIL when migrating from Python 2 to Python 3?

by Whoopee7177 3y ago

mixmastamyk 3y ago
The guy who was smart enough/motivated to do it showed up only a couple of years ago.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  That guy shows up every couple of years, almost like a prophecy https://github.com/larryhastings/gilectomy https://github.com/larryhastings/gilectomy
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Only Mr. Gross succeeded, the others are not relevant.
    - kzrdude 3y ago
      Right. We'll see if he does, I hope it goes well.
dragonwriter 3y ago
Because at the time of the 2-3 migration, parallelism wasn’t viewed as being as important as it is today.
- wtetzner 3y ago
  Is that really true? We already had multicore machines, and Herb Sutter's "The free lunch is over" article had been published for years by then.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    > Herb Sutter's "The free lunch is over" article had been published for years by then. Python 3.0 was released in 2008 with the work starting in early 2006 (maybe earlier, going by PEP 3000 which was published in April 2006). Herb Sutter's "The Free Lunch is Over" was first published in 2005. I don't think a year between its publishing and the work on Python 3 beginning qualifies as "years".
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Is that really true? For Python by Guido (this was still in the BDfL era)? Yes. For scripting languages generally? Also yes. For computing as a whole? While parallelism was more important than in either of the preceding contexts, it was still far less important than today, so, again, yes. > We already had multicore machines, and Herb Sutter's "The free lunch is over" article had been published for years by then. Barely, unless you are talking about multi-CPU SMP machines (which existed for PCs back to the 386 era); the first multicore x86 processors were released in May 2005 (And Sutter’s article was in March) about a year before the major decisions about Python 3.0 (published April 2006.)
    - wtetzner 3y ago
      Core 2 Duo was released in 2006, so people had multicore CPUs in their laptops the second half of that year. I'm just saying, in general, parallelism was viewed as important, but Guido apparently didn't think so.
  - Jiocus 3y ago
    I'm sure parallelism was understood and worked towards in computing at large and within certain programming languages. The then contemporary and popular use-cases for Python (which were they?) might have had very different challenges solved by other means. (I'm just guessing here)
  - kzrdude 3y ago
    Python is used much more widely and for more data tasks now than it was then, I think. Besides, we've all slowly adapted to using parallelism everywhere, it was not overnight.

Why has the Python community not removed the GIL when migrating from Python 2 to Python 3?

mixmastamyk 3y ago

The guy who was smart enough/motivated to do it showed up only a couple of years ago.

kzrdude 3y ago
That guy shows up every couple of years, almost like a prophecy https://github.com/larryhastings/gilectomy https://github.com/larryhastings/gilectomy
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Only Mr. Gross succeeded, the others are not relevant.
  - kzrdude 3y ago
    Right. We'll see if he does, I hope it goes well.

dragonwriter 3y ago

Because at the time of the 2-3 migration, parallelism wasn’t viewed as being as important as it is today.

wtetzner 3y ago
Is that really true? We already had multicore machines, and Herb Sutter's "The free lunch is over" article had been published for years by then.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  > Herb Sutter's "The free lunch is over" article had been published for years by then. Python 3.0 was released in 2008 with the work starting in early 2006 (maybe earlier, going by PEP 3000 which was published in April 2006). Herb Sutter's "The Free Lunch is Over" was first published in 2005. I don't think a year between its publishing and the work on Python 3 beginning qualifies as "years".
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Is that really true? For Python by Guido (this was still in the BDfL era)? Yes. For scripting languages generally? Also yes. For computing as a whole? While parallelism was more important than in either of the preceding contexts, it was still far less important than today, so, again, yes. > We already had multicore machines, and Herb Sutter's "The free lunch is over" article had been published for years by then. Barely, unless you are talking about multi-CPU SMP machines (which existed for PCs back to the 386 era); the first multicore x86 processors were released in May 2005 (And Sutter’s article was in March) about a year before the major decisions about Python 3.0 (published April 2006.)
  - wtetzner 3y ago
    Core 2 Duo was released in 2006, so people had multicore CPUs in their laptops the second half of that year. I'm just saying, in general, parallelism was viewed as important, but Guido apparently didn't think so.
- Jiocus 3y ago
  I'm sure parallelism was understood and worked towards in computing at large and within certain programming languages. The then contemporary and popular use-cases for Python (which were they?) might have had very different challenges solved by other means. (I'm just guessing here)
- kzrdude 3y ago
  Python is used much more widely and for more data tasks now than it was then, I think. Besides, we've all slowly adapted to using parallelism everywhere, it was not overnight.