encode/decode were likely not changed from Py2 to make porting easier. Otherwise it would likely have been to_bytes and str.from_bytes - much like "int" in Py3

encode/decode were likely not changed from Py2 to make porting easier. Otherwise it would likely have been to_bytes and str.from_bytes - much like "int" in Py3 with to_bytes and int.from_bytes.