This! Exactly this. The stupid decision to use ascii as the default codec (and to disobey the system locale while doing so!), combined with silent Unicode coerc

This! Exactly this. The stupid decision to use ascii as the default codec (and to disobey the system locale while doing so!), combined with silent Unicode coercion, doomed Python 2 to a lifetime of i18n pain. Just changing those two behaviors would have provided a much more evolutionary path forward without opening the Python 2 to 3 chasm.