Why would you have to specify the encoding if what you want is the normal, standard encoding?
Well, because utf-16-le definitely is *not* the normal, standard encoding. It is only the right thing if the C type is WCHAR[], which is a Microsoft invention.
Or, to rephrase the question, why do C programmers only have to s/char/wchar_t/, add a "w" to the front of the routine names and a u in front of the string constants, whereas Python programmers are now suddenly expected to learn all this mumbo-jumbo about encodings and such?
That is definitely not the only thing that C programmers have to do. They need to invoke conversion functions all the time. Plus, they are faced with the problem that, when integrating different Unicode-supporting libraries, they have to convert forth and back between different Unicode types. Regards, Martin