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UTF-8 Adoption Debate

Cluster focuses on advocacy for universal UTF-8 adoption as the default text encoding, frustrations with legacy systems like Windows using UTF-16, and discussions on backwards compatibility and Unicode handling.

📉 Falling 0.4x Programming Languages
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Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#3732
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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2011
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2012
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2013
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2018
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Top Contributors

account42 (50) masklinn (49) cryptonector (47) lmm (39) flohofwoe (37)

Keywords

e.g MUST JS doc.rust C99 ES6 SML NUL UTF8 UCS utf utf8 unicode ascii default mysql str locale strings 16

Sample Comments

leshenka • Nov 14, 2025 • View on HN

If software developers use anything other than utf-8 it's on them

lazyjones • Apr 22, 2020 • View on HN

Because of the prevalence of UTF-8 and its consequences/pitfalls?

HWR_14 • Sep 29, 2022 • View on HN

UTF-8 took over entirely for backwards compatibility reasons

pornel • Apr 29, 2013 • View on HN

Your foreign characters are my native. UTF-8 is 20 years old now. Just use it already!

plugnburn • Mar 9, 2016 • View on HN

UTF-8 must be the default and only encoding. Why does anything else still exist?

out_of_protocol • Apr 30, 2024 • View on HN

More pressure on M$ - faster the change. Also, almost any software nowadays assuming UTF8 for plaintext anyway

maze-le • Sep 25, 2015 • View on HN

It's 2015 and we still have UTF-8 problems... sigh

pyuser583 • Apr 30, 2024 • View on HN

Universal UTF-8 is a hope we aspire to, not a reality we assume.

akvadrako • Mar 24, 2019 • View on HN

UTF-8 is Unicode - your post doesn’t make much sense.

user5994461 • Jul 4, 2017 • View on HN

Unicode is more than just UTF-8.