The absolute minimum you must know about Unicode and encodings

In a blog post by Joel Spolsky, he emphasizes the importance of understanding Unicode and character sets for software developers. He highlights common misconceptions and the historical evolution of character encoding, from ASCII to the complexities of different code pages and the advent of Unicode. Spolsky explains how Unicode assigns a unique code point to each character, transcending the limitations of traditional 8-bit character representations. He clarifies that Unicode is not limited to 16 bits and can accommodate a vast number of characters. By delving into the theoretical concept of code points, Spolsky demystifies the idea that a character is simply a sequence of bits. He underscores the significance of Unicode in enabling the representation of diverse writing systems globally. Spolsky's informative narrative serves as a call to action for developers to grasp the fundamentals of character encoding to navigate the intricacies of internationalization in software development effectively.