The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL)

Elshad Karimov
Dev Genius
3 min readMay 2, 2024

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Photo by Clément Hélardot on Unsplash

The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is a mechanism used in the reference implementation of Python (CPython). It ensures that only one thread executes Python bytecode at a time. This lock is necessary because CPython’s memory management is not thread-safe.

Why the GIL Exists

Python uses reference counting for memory management, which is not inherently thread-safe due to…

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Software Engineer, Udemy Instructor and Book Author, Founder at AppMillers