I don't think roles deserve certain salaries. Different people are worth different amounts for the same role. As a corollary, I don't think women should have salary expectations because of a role.
The GIL is there to protect the interpreter's internal data structures, so it's only necessary to hold it while running the interpreter (while executing ruby code) or manipulating interpreter internals.
This is all IO, there's no interpreter execution while you're waiting for an HTTP request to come back so the GIL is released before starting IO, and re-acquired after the request comes back (before resuming execution), same when executing native code which doesn't interact with the interpreter (e.g. image processing implemented in C).
The GIL is an issue when you have multiple interpreted (not native) CPU-bound threads (and depending on the exact strategy it may also be an issue when there's an interpreted CPU-bound thread and multiple IO-bound threads, CPython 3's "new GIL" has/had that problem)
Also MRI has a GIL, GILs are implementation details (with consequences, but still) and other implementations may or may not use a GIL.
MRI has a GIL, but the GIL doesn't block on I/O like HTTP requests (but you'll still be pegged to one core unless you do process forking yourself). JRuby and Rubinius use native threads so you can use all cores with just Thread.new.
Green threads were removed from ruby when 1.9 was released, and we're almost at 2.2 now. Is there some other factor limiting you to one core?
Edit: I just want to say I've done some more reading on the subject and have learned that the GIL does in fact prevent a single process from running on multiple cores. That said, if you wrote a thread-safe ruby application, then just fork it n-1 times (where n = number of cores) and everything should be fine.
What versions of the JVM don't map JVM threads directly to Os threads? I thought green threading was removed a long time ago. I would love more info, thank you.
It definitely is. I've benchmarked similar solutions where the time it took to perform 1000+ POSTs to a REST endpoint was cut in half with every new thread up to about 6 threads. The interpreter performance for any language is going to be a much smaller impediment than the speed of the network.
The only way to change this is to make it so that enough people are using (mutually-indistinguishable) encrypted protocols, that blocking such protocols would cripple the ISP's business.
You realize it is walmart right? There is no bad word association. Any company the size of walmart, regardless of how you feel about their core business, is likely doing some cool things with technology.
LazoJS is quite nice. It is definitely more polished than RendrJS from AirBnB (equivalent framework for building SPAs that have fast first page load and are SEO-friendly).
