I don't know about that... even well before Python 3 was released, there were urgent warnings to programmers to STOP thinking of byte arrays as strings. Joel Sp

I don't know about that... even well before Python 3 was released, there were urgent warnings to programmers to STOP thinking of byte arrays as strings. Joel Spolsky's Unicode essay predates Python 3 by five years, for instance: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-absolutely-positively-must-know-about-unicode-and-character-sets-no-excuses/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minim... That shift in thinking was overdue in 2003 and it's way overdue now in 2017.