Python 2.x gotchas and landmines

Question

The purpose of my question is to strengthen my knowledge base with Python and get a better picture of it, which includes knowing its faults and surprises. To keep things sp

Answer 1

The only gotcha/surprise I've dealt with is with CPython's GIL. If for whatever reason you expect python threads in CPython to run concurrently... well they're not and this is pretty well documented by the Python crowd and even Guido himself.

A long but thorough explanation of CPython threading and some of the things going on under the hood and why true concurrency with CPython isn't possible. http://jessenoller.com/2009/02/01/python-threads-and-the-global-interpreter-lock/