Why Python?

As mentioned previously, one of the difficulties that developers face while working with concurrency in the Python programming language (specifically, CPython—a reference implementation of Python written in C) is its GIL. The GIL is a mutex that protects access to Python objects, preventing multiple threads from executing Python byte codes at once. This lock is necessary mainly because CPython's memory management is not thread-safe. CPython uses reference counting to implement its memory management. This results in the fact that multiple threads can access and execute Python code simultaneously; this situation is undesirable, as it can cause an incorrect handling of data, and we say that this type of memory management is not thread-safe. To address this problem, the GIL is, as the name suggests, a lock that allows only one thread to access Python code and objects. However, this also means that, to implement multithreading programs in CPython, developers need to be aware of the GIL and work around it. That is why many have problems with implementing concurrent systems in Python.

So, why use Python for concurrency at all? Even though the GIL prevents multithreaded CPython programs from taking full advantage of multiprocessor systems in certain situations, most blocking or long-running operations, such as I/O, image processing, and NumPy number crunching, happen outside the GIL. Therefore, the GIL only becomes a potential bottleneck for multithreaded programs that spend significant time inside the GIL. As you will see in future chapters, multithreading is only a form of concurrent programming, and, while the GIL poses some challenges for multithreaded CPython programs that allow more than one thread to access shared resources, other forms of concurrent programming do not have this problem. For example, multiprocessing applications that do not share any common resources among processes, such as I/O, image processing, or NumPy number crunching, can work seamlessly with the GIL. We will discuss the GIL and its place in the Python ecosystem in greater depth in Chapter 15, The Global Interpret Lock.

Aside from that, Python has been gaining increasing popularity from the programming community. Due to its user-friendly syntax and overall readability, more and more people have found it relatively straightforward to use Python in their development, whether it is beginners learning a new programming language, intermediate users looking for the advanced functionalities of Python, or experienced programmers using Python to solve complex problems. It is estimated that the development of Python code can be up to 10 times faster than C/C++ code.

The large number of developers using Python has resulted in a strong, ever-growing support community. Libraries and packages in Python are being developed and released every day, tackling different problems and technologies. Currently, the Python language supports an incredibly wide range of programming—namely, software development, desktop GUIs, video game design, web and internet development, and scientific and numeric computing. In recent years, Python has also been growing as one of the top tools in data science, big data, and machine learning, competing with the long-time player in the field, R.

The sheer number of development tools available in Python has encouraged more developers to start programming with Python, making Python even more popular and easy to use; I call this the vicious circle of Python. David Robinson, chief data scientist at DataCamp, wrote a blog (https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/06/incredible-growth-python/) about the incredible growth of Python, and called it the most popular programming language.

However, Python is slow, or at least slower than other popular programming languages. This is due to the fact that Python is a dynamically typed, interpreted language, where values are stored not in dense buffers, but in scattered objects. This is a direct result of Python's readability and user-friendliness. Luckily, there are various options regarding how to make your Python program run faster, and concurrency is one of the most complex of them; that is what we are going to master throughout this book.