Yes, but then extensions can already release the GIL and use the simple and industrial strength std::thread, which is orders of magnitude easier to debug.
Concurrent operations exist at all levels of the software stack. Just because native extensions might want to release the GIL and use OS threads doesn't mean pure Python can't also want (or need) that.
(And as a side note: I have never, in around a decade of writing C++, heard std::thread described as "easy to debug.")
I expected that dropping down to C/C++ would be a large jump in difficulty and quantity of code, but I've found it isn't, and the dev experience isn't entirely worse, as, for example, in-editor code-intelligence is rock solid and very fast in every corner of my code and the libraries I'm using.
If anyone could benefit from speeding up some Python code, I'd highly recommend installing cppyy and giving it a try.
Sure! I tried pybind11, and some other things. cppyy was the first I tried that didn't give me any trouble. I've been using it pretty heavily for about a year, and still no trouble.
It seems like you might be able to enable some optimizations with EXTRA_CLING_ARGS. Since it's based on cling, it's probably subject to whatever limitations cling has.
To be honest, I don't know much about the speed, as my use-case isn't speeding up slow code.
