The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source Free-threaded Python (Interview)
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Oct 2, 2024 
Pablo Galindo, co-host of the core.py podcast, dives deep into Python's revolutionary development. With Python 3.13 on the horizon, the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is set to be optional, paving the way for free-threading and true parallelism in applications. They also discuss the evolution of performance monitoring with Sentry, the nuances of community collaboration, and what's coming next for Python, including exciting prospects for JIT compilation. Galindo provides insights into how these changes aim to enhance both developer efficiency and user experience.
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PyCon Transcription Challenge
- Pablo Galindo apologized to the live transcriber at PyCon US for his fast speaking pace.
- The transcriber acknowledged his speed but successfully kept up.
GIL Limits Parallelism
- The GIL, a global lock in CPython, allows only one thread to execute Python code at a time, limiting true parallelism.
- While threads can switch (concurrency), they don't run simultaneously (parallelism) on multi-core systems.
GIL's Impact on Speed vs. Scalability
- Python's speed is mainly affected by its dynamic nature and indirection, not solely the GIL.
- The GIL improves single-threaded performance by simplifying locking but hinders scalability on multi-core systems.