Idea for removing the GIL...

[Paul Rubin]

sturlamolden <sturlamolden at yahoo.no> writes:
> comes with a cost. The interpreter will sometimes pause to collect
> garbage. The memory use will be larger as well, as garbage remain
> uncollected for a while and is not immediately reclaimed. Many rely on
> CPython because the interpreter does not pause and a Python process
> has a small fingerprint. 

We've had that discussion before: CPython's refcount scheme can also
pause (if the last reference to a large structure is released), CPython
has its own gc for cyclic structure with its own pauses, and Python is
fairly memory hungry compared to plenty of small Lisp systems or even
something like J2ME.  Python has many nice qualities which is why I use
it every day.  But the refcount scheme is just an implementation hack
that gets rationalized way too much.  I hope PyPy abandons it.