The unicode change is net-even functionally with 2.x. Unicode everywhere is a nice goal, but let's not pretend that 2.x can't do unicode and that 3.x is the only solution.
Not to mention that 3.x breaks many things about strings and unicode that were perfectly fine under 2.x. Things like forcing separate codecs for str/unicode (double the work!) and the elimination of basestr (what? why?). Armin did a great article on this a while back.
Sure python2 can do Unicode, but it's a pain and it's far too easy to introduce bug if you're not paying attention. Unicode everywhere is probably the only python3 feature I miss with any regularity when using python2.
Comments
The unicode change is net-even functionally with 2.x. Unicode everywhere is a nice goal, but let's not pretend that 2.x can't do unicode and that 3.x is the only solution.
Not to mention that 3.x breaks many things about strings and unicode that were perfectly fine under 2.x. Things like forcing separate codecs for str/unicode (double the work!) and the elimination of basestr (what? why?). Armin did a great article on this a while back.
Sure python2 can do Unicode, but it's a pain and it's far too easy to introduce bug if you're not paying attention. Unicode everywhere is probably the only python3 feature I miss with any regularity when using python2.