One thread has exclusive write access to a shared variable:
requests_issued += 1
Another periodically reads the variable:
print("Approximately number of requests", requests_issued)
Does this require a lock or is the variable read atomic, always giving a value either before or after the first thread makes an update?
I am not worried about the race condition, any recent value will do. I would care if a mid-update read were to fail by raising an exception, segfaulting or returning something other than an integer.