PEP 703: Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional (3.12 updates)

[thinkwell (David Burkholder)]

@guido

If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from the Python 2 to 3 transition, it’s that it would have been very beneficial if Python 2 and 3 code could coexist in the same Python interpreter. We blew it that time, and it set us back by about a decade.

Let’s not blow it this time.

That’s certainly true, but I’d also like to raise the point once more that an aspect of the prolonged 2->3 transition was because there was little-to-no compelling reason for many programmers to migrate to Python 3 - for 50-70% of that decade time-span.

The nogil project provides immense benefit right out of the gate, and the overall performance incentives to support nogil are likely to shrink adoption time.

This discussion on fosstodon summarizes my concerns well. The miracle has been performed; the GIL has been removed! I would be glad to see more SC energy on the nogil project and more cordial vibes from the faster-python team toward it.