Very well stated Guido!
by nickadmin
Thanks to Reddit today, I saw this posting from Guido Van Rossum about the recent flap about the GIL in Python:
On 9/13/07, Andy Wiggin <[andywiggin at gmail.com](http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/baypiggies)> wrote: > _I thought the discussion was very interesting. I think true parallel_ > _programming is the challenge of our time, so I'm quite disappointed_ > _that the Python powers that be do not seem to feel any imperative to_ > _address it. I've always been kind of assuming that Python would_ > _provide a "pythonic" parallel programming paradigm that would "just_ > _work" and be as elegant as the rest of the language._ I'm sorry, but this attitude just really pisses me off. Python is the work of many people. If you want something to happen, make it happen. Don't wait for someone else to solve your problem for you. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: [http://www.python.org/~guido/](http://www.python.org/%7Eguido/))
Guido is 100% right. I used to (and some times still do) sit around waiting for someone else to take care of a “problem”. That’s certainly one way to approach a problem, but it is even better if you can get into it, figure it out and produce your own solution. That is the way to truly gain new wisdom (and to learn all kinds of interesting new things). I have discovered several times that simply waiting for someone else solve your problem is a horrible compromise to make. It usually lessens the quality of your code because the solution isn’t a perfect fit for what you are doing, and overall keeps you from gaining the true deep knowledge that is oh so helpful when debugging. Not to mention the fact that so many open source projects have gotten their start because someone (like Guido) got tired of waiting for someone else to do something. I think its a great that Guido has been so up front with this whole GIL issue: He has said that if someone will do the leg work and prove a better way that is still backwards compatible he will welcome it. The key thing is that he said “someone” and not “I” or “me”. This encourages more people to get involved, and for a community based project/product/language, this is a great thing. So, kudos to you Guido! Keep up the great work! And please note that I am not saying that “Not Invented Here” syndrome is the way to go, I am saying: Don’t wait for a patch, see what you can do yourself to fix it!