More of that effort needs to go into compromises back to Python 2.x as opposed to figuring out how to beat people into going up to Python 3.x; it should not have taken until Python 3.3, for example, for the u'' syntax to return. They need to sprinkle a few well-placed "this is a way to get compatibility with Python 2 and 3 at the same time, without crazy tools, at least as an interim state". When I shifted from Ruby 1.8 to 1.9, there was nowhere near as much of a flag day of pain, even though they were attempting to solve the same overall problem (Unicode), and even though Ruby 1.8 was actually abysmal at Unicode (unlike Python 2, which contrary to many of the people who like to try to carrot people to Python 3, does not have any issues with Unicode; in fact, if anything, Python 2.x is better than Python 3.0 was, as Python 3 decided to "fix" a bunch of things, like filename encodings, which actually should not be assumed to have an encoding :/).