Running Python on SMP machine

[Donn Cave]

Quoth "Mark Hammond" <MarkH at ActiveState.com>:
...
| ...  Threads are often at risk of the
| C++-hammer/thumb syndrome - when your tool of preference is a thread,
| every problem becomes threaded :-)
|
| [Original: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts
| looking like a nail.  My favourite derivation: When the hammer you
| have is C++, everything starts looking like a thumb.]

I sure agree with this sentiment.  I have a lot of threads in some
of my programs, but usually as an inevitable consequence of using
some multi-threaded toolkit interface.

Someday it would be nice to have a kind of collective wisdom document
out there that outlines some of the issues you can run into with
threads, that wouldn't necessarily be obvious to someone who hasn't
already been there.  Part of it would certainly be the theory of
multi-threaded execution in Python - global interpreter lock, the
instruction count slice, etc., as recently discussed in this thread.
But also a lot of little trivia, like which devices really support
concurrent I/O.  Common graphics toolkits and threads.  Existing
thread dispatching library code if any.

I'm sure a lot of this is out there, though possibly in bits and
pieces.  Pointers to good factual information like that would be
more effective than generalities.  I can't live without threads,
but wouldn't touch them with a stick, all depends on the context.

	Donn Cave, donn at oz.net