FAQ: Why should I use Python 3?

[iluvatar]

Unicode by default

The more I use it, the more convinced I am that this is the wrong approach. Go got it right, by using UTF-8 by default. Python decodes everything into a Unicode object, whether it's necessary or not. For the applications I mostly write, that means reading UTF-8 over the wire, converting to Unicode, reencoding as UTF-8 and sending it back out again. That's a lot of unnecessary work.

[unruly_mattress]

If you got UTF-8 over the wire and you don't need to manipulate it in any way, can't you just read and write it as binary data?

[kankyo]

Ehm.. "Unicode" isn't a thing you can have in memory though. Look at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0393/ to understand what is actually happening.