[Python-Dev] ActiveState & fork & Perl

[David Ascher]

On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:

> I wonder if it's feasible or useful to promote threading support in
> Python?  Thoughts would include building threads in by default if
> possible on the platform, 

That seems a good idea to me.  It's a relatively safe thing to enable by
default, no?

> Providing more integrated support for threads might encourage
> programmers to reach for that particular tool instead of fork, which
> is crude, but pretty damn handy and easy to use.

While we're at it, it'd be nice if we could provide a better answer when
someone asks (as "they" often do) "how do I program with threads in
Python" than our usual "the way you'd do it in C".  Threading tutorials
are very hard to come by, I've found (I got the ORA multi-threaded
programming in win32, but it's such a monster I've barely looked at it). I
suggest that we allocate about 10% of TimBot's time to that task.  If
necessary, we can upgrade it to a dual-CPU setup.  With Greg's threading
patches, we could even get it to run on both CPUs efficiently. It could
write about itself.  <unplug>

--david