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A reliable coder friend told me that Python’s current multi-threading implementation is seriously buggy – enough to avoid using altogether. What can said about this rumor?
Python threads are good for concurrent I/O programming. Threads are swapped out of the CPU as soon as they block waiting for input from file, network, etc. This allows other Python threads to use the CPU while others wait. This would allow you to write a multi-threaded web server or web crawler, for example.
However, Python threads are serialized by the GIL when they enter interpreter core. This means that if two threads are crunching numbers, only one can run at any given moment. It also means that you can’t take advantage of multi-core or multi-processor architectures.
There are solutions like running multiple Python interpreters concurrently, using a C based threading library. This is not for the faint of heart and the benefits might not be worth the trouble. Let’s hope for an all Python solution in a future release.