3 ms·

…and this is exactly why this essay should be regularly reposted. If you write any software that is used by people other than yourself, you should care, because

by jwr 15y ago

…and this is exactly why this essay should be regularly reposted. If you write any software that is used by people other than yourself, you should care, because they will most likely find it broken. Also, if you write software for money, ignoring Unicode is just plain incompetent. I can't count the number of times I've had packages shipped to "Biały Kamień" or "Bia&#322;y Kamie&#324;" street instead of "Biały Kamień". If you expose even a single name or address field in your software, you need to handle Unicode. And yes, you need to handle Unicode even if you want to limit yourself only to the US market. Your customer might have an umlaut or an accent in his name.

rdtsc 15y ago
> If you write any software that is used by people other than yourself, you should care, I agree and I should know better. I even opened the link. But after reading for 10 seconds, I closed it. I just wasn't motivated enough. Even had to fix bugs and issues related to this just last month. But every time I do, I just go and find out enough to solve the problem and then never really dig deeper. Don't really know why it is this way.
- outworlder 15y ago
  How did you manage to learn anything in your profession then? Really, that is a short and well-written post, which shouldn't take more than minutes from your schedule.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    > How did you manage to learn anything in your profession then? I cared about it. I will forget to eat and sleep if I am studying something I am motivated about. The rest I just learn as needed only if am forced to (read "when stuff breaks"). Not a very good approach I guess.
- SiVal 15y ago
  You're just being more honest than most developers by admitting it. A large percentage of programmers feel that way. In fact Paul Graham shares your attitude and, consequently, limited awareness of internationalization issues. His "we can always tack it on later" approach to Unicode use in Arc combined with his "Arc strings are just a list of characters" claim gave it away. For many years, I made good money cleaning up after developers who felt just like you guys who were, nevertheless, brilliant at other aspects of programming. There's a lot to be said for using a team of specialists in different areas.
Dylan16807 15y ago
You don't really have to 'handle' simple fields with Unicode, just copy and paste what you were given.

by jwr 15y ago

rdtsc 15y ago

> If you write any software that is used by people other than yourself, you should care, I agree and I should know better. I even opened the link. But after reading for 10 seconds, I closed it. I just wasn't motivated enough. Even had to fix bugs and issues related to this just last month. But every time I do, I just go and find out enough to solve the problem and then never really dig deeper. Don't really know why it is this way.

outworlder 15y ago
How did you manage to learn anything in your profession then? Really, that is a short and well-written post, which shouldn't take more than minutes from your schedule.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  > How did you manage to learn anything in your profession then? I cared about it. I will forget to eat and sleep if I am studying something I am motivated about. The rest I just learn as needed only if am forced to (read "when stuff breaks"). Not a very good approach I guess.
SiVal 15y ago
You're just being more honest than most developers by admitting it. A large percentage of programmers feel that way. In fact Paul Graham shares your attitude and, consequently, limited awareness of internationalization issues. His "we can always tack it on later" approach to Unicode use in Arc combined with his "Arc strings are just a list of characters" claim gave it away. For many years, I made good money cleaning up after developers who felt just like you guys who were, nevertheless, brilliant at other aspects of programming. There's a lot to be said for using a team of specialists in different areas.

Dylan16807 15y ago

You don't really have to 'handle' simple fields with Unicode, just copy and paste what you were given.