I don't know about Ruby, but in Python, the GIL is there to protect the *interpr... | Hacker News

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		eykd on Feb 23, 2011 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Ruby concurrency explainined simply I don't know about Ruby, but in Python, the GIL is there to protect the interpreter from complicated locking and memory management overhead that thread-safety would require of it: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2007-May/007414... @jessenoller has a great summary of concurrency in Python: http://jessenoller.com/2009/02/01/python-threads-and-the-glo... The two worlds seem very similar.

viraptor on Feb 23, 2011 [–]

Sure, I understand the idea of GIL being faster than fine-grained locking for single-threaded apps. This is not how I read the article though (maybe that's what they meant...).

The speed can be sorted as (in most cases): single-threaded code, single-threaded with GIL, single-threaded with fine locks.

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