[python] Python 3 - Encode/Decode vs Bytes/Str

I am new to python3, coming from python2, and I am a bit confused with unicode fundamentals. I've read some good posts, that made it all much clearer, however I see there are 2 methods on python 3, that handle encoding and decoding, and I'm not sure which one to use.

So the idea in python 3 is, that every string is unicode, and can be encoded and stored in bytes, or decoded back into unicode string again.

But there are 2 ways to do it:
u'something'.encode('utf-8') will generate b'bytes', but so does bytes(u'something', 'utf-8').
And b'bytes'.decode('utf-8') seems to do same thing as str(b'', 'utf-8').

Now my question is, why are there 2 methods that seem to do the same thing, and is either better than the other (and why?) I've been trying to find answer to this on google, but no luck.

>>> original = '27?????????'
>>> type(original)
<class 'str'>
>>> encoded = original.encode('utf-8')
>>> print(encoded)
b'27\xe5\xb2\x81\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\xa6\x87\xe7\x94\x9f\xe5\xad\xa9\xe5\xad\x90\xe5\x90\x8e\xe5\x8f\x98\xe8\x80\x81'
>>> type(encoded)
<class 'bytes'>
>>> encoded2 = bytes(original, 'utf-8')
>>> print(encoded2)
b'27\xe5\xb2\x81\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\xa6\x87\xe7\x94\x9f\xe5\xad\xa9\xe5\xad\x90\xe5\x90\x8e\xe5\x8f\x98\xe8\x80\x81'
>>> type(encoded2)
<class 'bytes'>
>>> print(encoded+encoded2)
b'27\xe5\xb2\x81\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\xa6\x87\xe7\x94\x9f\xe5\xad\xa9\xe5\xad\x90\xe5\x90\x8e\xe5\x8f\x98\xe8\x80\x8127\xe5\xb2\x81\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\xa6\x87\xe7\x94\x9f\xe5\xad\xa9\xe5\xad\x90\xe5\x90\x8e\xe5\x8f\x98\xe8\x80\x81'
>>> decoded = encoded.decode('utf-8')
>>> print(decoded)
27?????????
>>> decoded2 = str(encoded2, 'utf-8')
>>> print(decoded2)
27?????????
>>> type(decoded)
<class 'str'>
>>> type(decoded2)
<class 'str'>
>>> print(str(b'27\xe5\xb2\x81\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\xa6\x87\xe7\x94\x9f\xe5\xad\xa9\xe5\xad\x90\xe5\x90\x8e\xe5\x8f\x98\xe8\x80\x81', 'utf-8'))
27?????????
>>> print(b'27\xe5\xb2\x81\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\xa6\x87\xe7\x94\x9f\xe5\xad\xa9\xe5\xad\x90\xe5\x90\x8e\xe5\x8f\x98\xe8\x80\x81'.decode('utf-8'))
27?????????

To add to add to the previous answer, there is even a fourth way that can be used

import codecs
encoded4 = codecs.encode(original, 'utf-8')
print(encoded4)

To add to Lennart Regebro's answer There is even the third way that can be used:

encoded3 = str.encode(original, 'utf-8')
print(encoded3)

Anyway, it is actually exactly the same as the first approach. It may also look that the second way is a syntactic sugar for the third approach.

A programming language is a means to express abstract ideas formally, to be executed by the machine. A programming language is considered good if it contains constructs that one needs. Python is a hybrid language -- i.e. more natural and more versatile than pure OO or pure procedural languages. Sometimes functions are more appropriate than the object methods, sometimes the reverse is true. It depends on mental picture of the solved problem.

Anyway, the feature mentioned in the question is probably a by-product of the language implementation/design. In my opinion, this is a nice example that show the alternative thinking about technically the same thing.

In other words, calling an object method means thinking in terms "let the object gives me the wanted result". Calling a function as the alternative means "let the outer code processes the passed argument and extracts the wanted value".

The first approach emphasizes the ability of the object to do the task on its own, the second approach emphasizes the ability of an separate algoritm to extract the data. Sometimes, the separate code may be that much special that it is not wise to add it as a general method to the class of the object.