If it's just about I/O, then no, threads in Python are super easy:

    import random
    import time
    from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed


    def hello(seconds):
        print(f"Starting hello in {seconds}s")
        time.sleep(seconds)
        print(f"End of hello in {seconds}s")
        return seconds


    # At the end of this blocks, it automatically join() and clean
    with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=2) as executor: # 2 tasks in parallel max

        # this send jobs to threads via safe queues
        a = executor.submit(hello, random.randint(0, 5))
        b = executor.submit(hello, random.randint(0, 5))

        # this collect results from queues in order of completion
        # sync is automatic
        for future in as_completed((a, b)):  
            print(future.result())

And if about network I/O only, you can get even more perfs using asyncio.

Threads in Python are only inferior to Java threads when it's about using several CPU.