Global-interpreter-lock Memes

Python dev gets asked about performance optimization and immediately pivots to literally anything else. The GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) is Python's dirty little secret—it's that lovely threading bottleneck that ensures only one thread executes Python bytecode at a time, even on multi-core processors. So when someone mentions "performance," seasoned Python devs develop selective hearing real fast. It's like asking someone about their ex at a party. Sure, we could talk about how the GIL makes true parallel processing impossible in CPython, or how you need multiprocessing instead of multithreading to actually use those fancy CPU cores... but hey, look over there! Pandas is great! Django is awesome! Let's talk about literally anything except why your CPU-bound code runs like it's 1995.