Absolutely, there's quite a few gaffes in java (other languages have similar issues too): * char being 16bit and thus can't hold a modern unicode character *

Absolutely, there's quite a few gaffes in java (other languages have similar issues too): * char being 16bit and thus can't hold a modern unicode character * lots and lots of string and byte stream methods that have variants without explicit charset parameters, making it very easy to accidentally have a hidden dependency on the implicit default charset (aka -Dfile.encoding) * Using strings instead of byte[] for filename values * Having to deal with UnsupportedEncodingExceptions as checked exceptions whenever referencing the UTF8 encoding