Multithreading in Python is a method of executing multiple threads concurrently. A thread is a separate flow of execution, which means that every task (or function) runs independently from one another and every thread can run different parts of your program.
This is particularly useful for handling tasks that may block or take a long time to run, such as I/O operations, web scraping, or intensive computations. Running these tasks concurrently on different threads can optimize a program’s execution speed and improve overall performance.
It should be noted, however, that due to Python’s Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), multithreading may not necessarily improve speed for CPU-bound tasks because it actually prevents numerous native threads from running simultaneously on multiple cores. Instead, the GIL allows the execution of a single thread at a time in a single process.
