This is not what the blog post is saying. It is saying that Python 3's attitude of forcing Unicode is making life difficult, whereas in Python 2 it is easier to

This is not what the blog post is saying. It is saying that Python 3's attitude of forcing Unicode is making life difficult, whereas in Python 2 it is easier to decode to Unicode where needed, and be able to accept non-Unicode data in other cases. That Unicode needs to be supported was never under discussion.