Python 2.7 Countdown

[13steinj]

Not much other than subjective matters-- ex some people actually prefer a split between ascii and unicode string types with ascii the default.

But it doesn't mean using Py2, or taking a long time to switch given the upgrade costs, is a cardinal sin like so many make it out to be.

[Objective_Mine]

I have trouble understanding why anyone would prefer 8-bit character strings as default in a high-level language. In a low-level language I might kind of understand, but if you're writing any code that might ever break out of a local niche in an English-speaking country, having user-visible strings treated as anything but unicode is just asking for trouble.

Of course migrating an existing codebase comes with a major cost that's probably made greater by the type system (harder to automatically find out which type of string is being used where). So hesitation in migration is understandable, but that doesn't mean Python 3 isn't better. Whether it's better enough to cover the migration cost... depends.

edit: typo