Yes, I have used python 2 quite often, as well as python 3. Python 2 is sloppy in this regard. You can use a "str" to represent text, and it will work perfect

Yes, I have used python 2 quite often, as well as python 3. Python 2 is sloppy in this regard. You can use a "str" to represent text, and it will work perfectly, so long as you stay within the ASCII character set, setting up hidden bugs later. Telling everybody to just use u"", while correct, sets up "" as something that looks correct, but isn't. In addition, suggesting that "str" is a sequence of bytes, rather than a string, is rather inappropriate. The documentation refers to them as strings, they are created in similar manner to strings in other languages, and they are generally accepted by library methods that set text properties. I agree that there were some changes that were unnecessary, like the removal of the u"" syntax. That said, I think that the fundamental change, which was to have the thing named "string" be a string, was the right choice. Python has always been about having the obvious choice be the correct choice. Telling everybody that "quoted text" is not text runs counter to this.