[ygra]

Indeed. I think Python 3 is very explicit with that distinction as well. You can have either text, which is in Unicode, or you have data which are arbitrary bytes. Sure, those bytes can represent text by interpreting them with a specific encoding, but you have to convert between one and the other explicitly to make it work. A very nice thing after the debacle in Python 2 where bytestrings in UTF-8 locales on Unix-likes happen to almost work in many cases, just to break horribly in other environments.

That being said, there are a lot of inaccuracies and even wrong things in that article, which saddens me.