Actually the reason for the Global Interpreter Lock is because cPython decided that had less overhead than making the reference counters atomic variables (plus you would still need some kind of locking when modifying any object with a reference count greater than one, though this is such a tiny amount of what a typical Python program does that it is probably irrelevant).

I personally have doubts this is true, but the argument is not impossible. I am wondering if their measurements were on older systems, modern ones are better at atomic operations.

There have been double-blind studies and they have shown it does *not* exist.

The statement is that there have been no serious studies (including double-blind ones) that show it *does* exist.

Now look up how the two are processed by your body, and alcohol's affect on your blood sugar levels, then reconsider your statement in the context of an article on how substances affect your body.

No, alcohol is basically just sugar too... They have protein, and starches to fall back on... So basically, this leads to the same advice as they've been giving for a good long while. A reasonable amount of meat and fish, preferably white meat, and lots of salads, leafy greens, and veg...

American troll is American. The UK doesn't have a social security number (There's a similar concept, but it's called a National Insurance Number).

In practice, single desktop class machines with 6000+ concurrent users are not typical use cases. Instead, high performance applications are likely to look more like 3D rendering engines.

In practice, when you have 16ms to produce a frame, it really matters that the garbage collector doesn't kick in for 2ms once every second, because that'll push you past your frame window and lead to stuttering and dropped frames.

In practice, it really matters that you can structure your code to make sure no allocations are happening during certain critical operations, because an allocation will potentially need a new page, and the kernel barrier and/or hit locks resulting again, in 1-2ms of unexpected delay, and a dropped frame.

In practice, it really matters too that you have enough control over memory layout to guarantee that certain structures are all going to end up in cache at the same time, and that you're not going to be doing a bunch of pointer indirection fetching memory during time critical rendering code.

In practice, modern garbage collection doesn't allow you to solve any of these problems. That is why real time rendering engines are still written in C++, and will continue to be, and why everyone writing them will continue to be glad that C++ is not garbage collected.

Lack of garbage collection is one of many reasons why C++ produces fast code. The entire point of using C++ is that you want to have control over how, when and where things are allocated and deallocated.

Maybe on the job training is no substitute for not having invested years in learning the maths and skills required to do the job.

In an industry where the average employment length is 2-3 years, and the amount of time it takes to train someone to do a job well is 2-3 years, on the job training isn't going to pay off for anyone.

Happens on phones.

It matters because people take these treatments believing they'll solve their problems, and don't seek real medical help that's actually demonstrated to work.

That is a better explanation, I agree

That's great for you. Meanwhile I commute from the west of Sunnyvale (takes about 15 minutes), and am about 3 minutes from open countryside.

And you think these things (mod buildings older than the USA) don't exist in San Francisco?

London isn't cheaper than the Valley at all. Average house prices in central London are £5000 a square foot. Slightly further out they're around £1500 a square foot.

Compare that to the valley, where in the south bay they're around $1500 a square foot in central SF, and $1000 a square foot in the south bay. (note, different currencies, so the delta is bigger than it looks). London is both more expensive than the bay area, and they'll pay you less.

As far as urban sprawl goes... the Bay Area is far less sprawled than London. Even if you are in the centre of the largest spread of sprawl in the bay area (probably somewhere slightly west of the centre of San Jose), you're at most 20 minutes from open country side (by car). In London, in the centre, you're roughly 2 hours away, such is the size of the sprawl.

Even if you measure sprawl by the time it takes to commute, and assume a worst case in the bay area (living in Oakland, working at Apple is probably about the worst) - that's a 1 hour commute. That's a pretty short commute by London standards. More so, the commute in the bay area will have been done entirely on nice (not crowded) coaches, rather than over-crowded, not-air-conditioned trains and underground services.

Are there really people who love the urban sprawl that covers the entirety of Greater London?

Cambridge would have been a great choice. An even better choice though would have been Silicon Glen, which has existed for decades already. The games industry is hugely strong in Scotland, and one of the primary drivers of the economy. He should have tried to build on there being a lot of software engineers already there, and expanded it beyond just the games industry.

I agree completely that trying to set up "Silicon Roundabout" in London is complete bullshit. But hey, that's the hallmark of the tories - if it's not about the South East of England, then it doesn't count, and/or doesn't exist.