You can tell .decode what to do with errors so it won't throw an exception, the default is 'strict'. I think python 3.6+ did a pretty good job with it overall.

You can tell .decode what to do with errors so it won't throw an exception, the default is 'strict'. I think python 3.6+ did a pretty good job with it overall. Don't get me wrong it's still painful and annoying and bug prone, but the point is, it's encodings, it's always going to suck no matter what.