Speak for yourself. After using Python 3, I can't stand touching Python 2 codebases. Is a given str object an actual text string that's been decoded into a valid charset, or is it an array of bytes fresh from the network / database / file? Who knows, unless you trace back to its point of origin. I personally love that Python 3 says "this is text, and this is some binary data I got somewhere, and they are not the same thing".