The part that was so annoying is that if unicode is great - then letting us use the nonconflicting u"" would have let us bring 2.0 libraries into 3.0 land much

The part that was so annoying is that if unicode is great - then letting us use the nonconflicting u"" would have let us bring 2.0 libraries into 3.0 land much more easily while ALSO improving 2.x libraries. And with no pain really. If they needed to they could have a done a --compat flag. It wasn't until 3.3 and then 3.4 that there was finally some give. We got u"" back. We also go some ability to handle the net (ASCII / Binary Transform stuff) in a quasi sensible way. But boy - was it a screw you until then. And I got seriously tired of having folks who don't actually maintain any code lecturing on and on about how this was the better way. Sure - if you are in a monorepo. But not if you are library author supporting endless versions of python!