I wouldn't write a video codec in python either, nor would I write code that requires a huge amount of shared volatile state, but these things are not common coding tasks in general, particularly not in enterprisey-type programming.

> Maybe I don't know or don't like to program in C?

If you want to write a video codec or highly performant multithreaded code, you should probably give it a go.

>Of the 'numerous ways to sidestep the GIL' none are satisfactory if you have a CPU bound problem operating on shared state, that lends itself well to parallel execution, which are many.

You mean exactly like the matrix calculations done in the C extensions of numpy?