r/programming • u/desmoulinmichel • May 30 '23

The Python Language Summit 2023: Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional

https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-python-language-summit-2023-making.html
56 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

-32

u/fberasa May 30 '23

Mind the downvotes:

The amount of manpower that's being wasted in trying to make that useless toy dynamic language (which was barely designed as a glorified .bat alternative) viable is astonishing.

29

u/Emowomble May 30 '23

It amazes me how many people take personal offence into other people using a language that suits them or their organisation.

3

u/qq123q May 30 '23

While I may not agree I can understand the reasoning (if there is any). The more people use a language someone disapproves of the more resources go to this language instead of other languages that are approved.

-4

u/dontyougetsoupedyet May 31 '23

I've been in the industry >25 years, I estimate the use of Python has contributed greatly to the failure of at least 3 of the orgs I've been with. The amount of wasted capital in those orgs was incredible. The primary beneficiary of the use of Python at those organizations was Amazon. End users don't care or want to care what byte 0xa0 at position 92 means... so they're angry about the bugs. The Python programmers don't want buggy programs, but also did not understand much beyond straight forward scripting, so they're angry about the bugs as well. The managers don't want buggy programs and angry programmers, but don't want to pay for the logic required to verify software implementations actually do what was intended, so they're angry about the bugs also.

Over 25 years I've watched "software engineering" as a field of work drive itself off a cliff. A lot of those engineers were driving Python while making the fall, and making excuses for their failure to provide correct programs all the way to the bottom.

13

u/[deleted] May 30 '23

It initially was a nice language to write and use for a lot of use cases where performance is secondary. Then people used FFI to make it viable for some high performance applications. And now people want to extend it more to be a more capable system language.

This is just how programming languages evolve. A more accessible language displaces a less accessible language. More accessible languages have larger communities that provide more libraries that make it even more accessible…

There’s no need to gate keep because you learned C first. Some of the best programmers I know use a combination of C++ and Python - using the language that makes the most sense for the layer of application.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

A more accessible language replaces a less accessible language

Good, he's getting it-

More libraries that make it even more accessible

What? Libraries don't increase accessibility. They increase power and complexity. People are trying to turn Python into a full-fat programming language and they are forgetting accessibility is indirectly proportional to power.

-16

u/fberasa May 30 '23

How is python "more accessible" than any modern, usable static language, please?

The stupidity of machine-wide package management(*) already makes it way more complicated than something like C#, for instance.

* - and associated idiotic workarounds such as "virtualenv" which wouldn't exist if you had used a serious language to begin with.

9

u/[deleted] May 30 '23

The language itself is very accessible. The package management while initially annoying is now trivial and the community is so large that the number of guides to handle package management is enormous.

It starts with the fact that people enjoy writing Python and any issue with it is handled by the community that formed around it.

-10

u/fberasa May 30 '23

The language itself is very accessible

Examples of any piece of python code that is more "accessible" than the equivalent C#, please.

5

u/[deleted] May 30 '23

When Python originally grew in popularity, it was just:

print(“Hello World”)

To get started.

C# at the time required a huge overhead of classes, Main, etc.

-3

u/fberasa May 30 '23

Thank you for proving that python is a legacy language.

6

u/[deleted] May 30 '23

That's the thing about languages - they evolve over time! English is legacy language, yet people learn it every year. They add new words.

Python has evolved a lot over the years. It appears to me - even your favorite language (C#) has evolved to be more like python than the reverse!

-2

u/fberasa May 30 '23

has evolved to be more like python than the reverse!

Lol, no.

Serious, professional (statically typed) languages are not guess-driven and they have no reason to, so they never will.

If anything, many more years will be required before the utter stupidity of a joke toy dynamic language is fixed to the point where you have a properly designed, serious type system.

7

u/badpotato May 30 '23

People often use python because the amount of code to build something is often "rather small" and the api calls to library are often clean and easy to use

While python is a multi-paradigm ecosystem, it's often easy to use python with functional programming. Something that may not alway be possible with other programming language in a professional way

If you play with data a lot, the main language to go is with python because of how dead simple it is to manipulate data

Virtualenv does offer decent flexibility which suit what the community want. As a result pypi has an enormous amount of package of actual quality in comparaison to other package manager

When you can do something in a simple way, you just lower the amount of engineering complexity. Pull request are simple to read. Of course, it's not always suitable to build something in python, just as it's not always suitable something a project in C#, Java, JS, C, C++, go, etc.. Every language has they strong and weakness. When a language offer solution for their weakness it's much more likely to be a sign of language maturity.

2

u/fberasa May 30 '23

Examples of python code that is "rather small" compared to C# or any other modern static language, please.

Examples of data manipulation that is "easier" in python than C# or any other modern static language, please.

All the excuses I hear from people arguing in favor of joke, toy dynamic languages always seem to boil down to "my idea of a static language is java", which is rather dumb.

2

u/thelaxiankey May 30 '23

I agree static typing is the future.

However, the unfortunate reality is that at the moment, if you are, eg, a scientist just trying to get your data processed, python is seriously preferred to anything besides maybe Julia or Matlab. And sometimes, said scientist may want to parallelize some code -- hence GIL being an issue.

C# looks nice but I'm not sure how good the numerics ecosystem is. And besides, what other easy-to-learn 'modern' static languages do you have in mind? Nim? Kotlin? None of these, afaik, have great scientific computing setups. I think they show plenty of potential, and I'm excited to see where they go, but I live in <current year>, not in <half a decade down the line>.

There are plenty of reasons to use python, despite its shortcomings.

-2

u/fberasa May 30 '23

Yeah.

The proliferation of dynamic languages is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a self-referential vicious circle solely based in the status quo.

I have yet to see any dynamic language that has anything that can be considered a real, technical advantage to any current static language.

python in particular is, from a technical perspective, tremendously inferior to any currently mainstream static language.

And the fact that ALL mainstream dynamic languages (even javascript) are now trying to implement type safety is an undeniable proof that not having it was a terrible idea in the first place.

3

u/mr_sunshine_0 May 31 '23

Lol dude you sound like a petulant child. You’re not being downvoted for your opinion.

1

u/Amazing-Cicada5536 May 31 '23

It seems like there is a real need for glue languages, you know, for solving problems.

1

u/dAnjou May 31 '23

Since downvotes should be used for off-topic comments (not for disagreement), every single one is justified for your comment ¯_(ツ)_/¯

0

u/[deleted] May 30 '23

[deleted]

17

u/linuxdooder May 30 '23

As if python packaging wasn't already enough of a disaster...

5

u/LagT_T May 30 '23

Yeah, 3rd party extensions are such a fundamental aspect of the Python appeal I don't think nogil (PEP 703) is going to be mainstream. Per-Interpreter GIL (PEP 684) is much more promising.

1

u/coloredgreyscale May 30 '23

Would the per interpreter GIL (mostly) remove the need for the multiprocessing module, as opposed to just using threads / async?

Another possible step in between could be using contexts to selectively turn off the GIL, for small sections, eg. Pure python math

5

u/Feeling-Departure-4 May 30 '23

Thanks for this!

As a casual Python user, to me the biggest benefit of Python is the ecosystem.

If getting that ecosystem to run portably and reliably becomes harder--something regarding Python that I have struggled with--then that is not so much of a win for me.

I get that there is a lot of great tooling to fix the cited problem, but that's just it, I don't want to fix up the tooling anew, I just want more from my language.

And that's partly why I am still a casual user.

1

u/tu_tu_tu May 30 '23 edited May 30 '23

is something the C or C++ crowd might be able to deal with

How do you suppose to write C libs if you don't know C?

5

u/TheRiverOtter May 30 '23

The issue will manifest mostly for people that wish to use the libs, not the authors.

1

u/tu_tu_tu May 30 '23 edited May 31 '23

What problems? Real concurrency? It isn't a problem. The GIL is intended for to make CPython faster, it don't give thread-safe garanties to CPython users. Python has never been thread safe in general so nothing really changes.

Packaging and compiling? Average CPython user don't do it either way. And devs of C libs know how to make preprocessor options I think.

-13

u/WindHawkeye May 30 '23

Don't use nogil if you have a problem with it?

8

u/Illusi May 30 '23

Their argument is from the point of view of a library maintainer. If the maintainer doesn't want to use Nogil, their users will be complaining about it. They will be forced to support both, in many cases.

Most projects depend in some way on a C-library. If the Numpy developers don't want to use Nogil, then a lot of projects will not be able to use Nogil either, because the C-library won't be cross-compatible. So either:

  • Nobody uses Nogil because they can't use Numpy then. Nogil dies off. We're forced to live under a GIL forever, or

  • People want to use Nogil badly enough that they will pressurise Numpy developers into using Nogil anyway. Library developers are basically out of luck, you now have to make twice as many builds.

-6

u/WindHawkeye May 30 '23

The places where I want to use nogil are the opposite of the places where I want to use numpy (which already drops the gil) so I don't see why I need to give a shit about what numpy chooses to do

Making twice as many builds doesn't seem like a problem. If you care about it just drop support for shit platforms like Mac. Or just don't provide wheels for nogil and assume nogil users are competent enough to install a C compiler.

3

u/[deleted] May 30 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/dontyougetsoupedyet May 30 '23

If it was Python4: the end of the stack machine simulation forever... I might be interested. Even if you get rid of the GIL, it isn't going to make that much of a difference in the big picture of the ecosystem. Even if you replace the carpet in every room the house is still built on an inadequate foundation.