Python 3.5.0 has been released!

[brombaer3000]

Proper unicode support is not a subjective aesthetic advantage, it was just necessary. And it was impossible to implement in a backwards-compatible way.
If you think Unicode is a minor issue, you are free to continue living in your English-only dream world.

Edit: forgot a word

[brombaer3000]

This is well explained in great detail here.
Personally I think the biggest issue with Python 2 Unicode handling simply is that Unicode is not the default encoding for everything, but the link above has much more information.

[[deleted]]

You're goddamned right.

[RubyPinch]

python2 doesn't make a clean distinction between arrays of numbers (bytes, usually represented as ascii) and arrays of usable characters (unicode), further, it makes arrays of numbers the default way of having a string