threadTest.py

import threading
import time
class theThread(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, threadId): # From my understanding this is the only thing that runs when I call thread1 = myThread()
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.threadId = threadId
    def run(self):
        print "running task"
        doSomething(str(self.threadId))


def doSomething(threadName):
    time.sleep(10)
    #in reality this will do some i/o bound stuff as well as a few small cpu bound things
    print threadName + "finished executing"

list = [1, 2, 3]
listOfThreads = []
for thread in list:
    listOfThreads.append(theThread(thread))#initialize the thread, run the  __init__ statement

for thread in listOfThreads:
    if  (threading.activeCount()<3): #if there's 2 threads running, don't start a new one
        thread.start()
    else:
        print "too many threads, we'll wait for a few seconds then start it."
        time.sleep(5)#until we wait forr 4 seconds
        thread.start()