Armin is an incredibly smart guy for sure, but I'm not 100% I agree with him on all points.

I don't think he's wrong. I think he's probably right. And, I know it's a rant. I just don't agree that many of his points are "problems."

There are many, many issues that the change fixes. And, like every change, it does break some things. But, it was done for real reasons, not just because: https://docs.python.org/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html#text-vs-data-i...

Some of the reasons were technical, some were very "we should be more standard."

I agree with the Python3 team, here. Mostly because it's more obvious what Python is doing now. But, it's also cleaner in my opinion.

It makes things harder, sure, 100%. But that's not always a problem or a bad thing. In this case, the more work comes with clarity and less chance for bugs (less edge cases).