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If I remember Guido van Rossum did mention the status of the GIL in one of the Lex Friedman episodes [1] he was on (it's been a while, so I may be misremembering). Surprised to see a big decision like this happen so quickly. Did Meta's announcement play a big role in this [2]? [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DVyjdw4t9I [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36643670
A lot will depend on the Python community and the distribution channels. I could see the community struggling to adopt it in a timely fashion, or distributions jumping the gun (Ubuntu, Fedora, Anaconda). Maybe it's too early to make hard decisions, but how much control does the SC really have to avoid such a scenario?
The chosen solution is similar to how PHP used TSRMLS_ macros in the Zend engine - if threadsafety (ZTS) was #defined, all functions took an extra thread context parameter, breaking ABI.
I know they say specifically that they don't want a repeat of the Python3 transition scenario, but the approach they're taking now still veers eerily close to that path, at least it looks that way to me. A lot will depend on the Python community and the distribution channels. I could see the community struggling to adopt it in a timely fashion, or distributions jumping the gun (Ubuntu, Fedora, Anaconda). Maybe it's t…
But apparently Python needs some "success" and this makes a good bullet point. Correctness does not really matter in the Python world.
If I remember Guido van Rossum did mention the status of the GIL in one of the Lex Friedman episodes [1] he was on (it's been a while, so I may be misremembering). Surprised to see a big decision like this happen so quickly. Did Meta's announcement play a big role in this [2]? [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DVyjdw4t9I [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36643670
Removing him as BDFL was probably the best thing to have happened to Python. He never prioritized performance as a top priority, at least not the same way Lua, JavaScript and Java did. Even Ruby has a JIT now.
What?
Python could have been the one language with a sane multithreading model. Now it risks becoming a second version of Java. I fear this will make it a less attractive programming language, not least because it might lose its beginner friendlyness. For example, without the GIL a lot more care must be put into designing your programs. This can be true even though your own code is single threaded, for example when you use a library that is multithreaded and has callbacks to your code
Why?
Free threading as introduced by PEP 703 is well known to be errorprone, hard to get right and generally advised against, unless you know exactly what you are doing. In other words free threading is for expert (as in very experienced) use only. And Python already has an expert mode - called Cython oer Numba to name just two.
Personally I can see no good will come from bringing free threading to the masses. Yes it addresses a common critique (by many) and need (by very few), but it addresses it in a very risky way (for the vast majority of Python users).
A better alternative
IMHO the far better and still my preferred approach would have been to favor a per-thread GIL with an explicit mode to share particular objects. This would benefit everyone without the risks. It would be consistenly beginner friendly, and above all, offer a safe path to concurrent programming without impacting the whole ecosystem. Heck we could even call it the "Pythonic Threading Model", and it would be seen as a differentiator.
With PEP703 you would compile Python either for multi or single-threading mode. The mode affects the ABI and therefore which C extensions are available. Eventually all C extensions would have an available port to the new ABI. The chosen solution is similar to how PHP used TSRMLS_ macros in the Zend engine - if threadsafety (ZTS) was #defined, all functions took an extra thread context parameter, breaking ABI.
Unpopular opinion: This is a missed opportunity. What? Python could have been the one language with a sane multithreading model. Now it risks becoming a second version of Java. I fear this will make it a less attractive programming language, not least because it might lose its beginner friendlyness. For example, without the GIL a lot more care must be put into designing your programs. This can be true even though you…
Unpopular opinion: This is a missed opportunity. What? Python could have been the one language with a sane multithreading model. Now it risks becoming a second version of Java. I fear this will make it a less attractive programming language, not least because it might lose its beginner friendlyness. For example, without the GIL a lot more care must be put into designing your programs. This can be true even though you…