I think the author's basic point is that if we standardize on utf-8, that "8 bit anxiety" goes away. I did my first programming assignment on punched cards, so

I think the author's basic point is that if we standardize on utf-8, that "8 bit anxiety" goes away. I did my first programming assignment on punched cards, so I probably have permanent ASCII/EBCDIC brain damage. However, this article decisively convinces even me that utf-8 wins and other encodings represent fail.