GC leak?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Vladimir G. Ivanovic writes:
 > on 02/02/2008 12:54 AM Stephen J. Turnbull said the following:
 > > I've been following Python for
 > > years and they still don't have an alternative to the Global
 > > Interpreter Lock AFAIK.  
 > 
 > Does Parrot support multiple threads?

I don't know, but I would think any news that Parrot supports multiple
threads well would set python-dev on fire, and I haven't noticed any
firetrucks (except the ones heading toward San Diego :-( ) recently.

My understanding from the discussions on python-dev and from Simon
Peyton-Jones's chapter "Beautiful Concurrency" in _Beautiful Code_ is
that multithreading is not about the execution model (ie, the
interpreter per se) as it is about the data model.  The problem is
developing ways for the language to mark some data as safe, so that
the interpreter doesn't need to lock them, while others are vulnerable
to reentrancy etc and need to be protected.  Interpreter reentrancy
per se is important, but it's a bounded task.  Fixing the language is
not.