It really seemed that the issue was mostly "Unicode is really hard if you haven't thought _deeply_ about it" because application code, library and framework cod

It really seemed that the issue was mostly "Unicode is really hard if you haven't thought _deeply_ about it" because application code, library and framework code, _and_ "system" Python code had to go through several iterations of "here's how to do it right" before something reasonable came out that solved issues for most / all stakeholders. And the Swift / Raku people are still sitting on the sidelines smiling, knowing that there are a lot more "lenses" to view text through that Python doesn't make easy (but neither does Haskell, JS, or Java, so there's good company in good-enough-for-now land).