The Absolute Minimum Every Developer Must Know About Unicode (2003) (opens in new tab)

(joelonsoftware.com)

5 pointsMouq12y ago2 comments

2 comments

Joel is pretty good, but UTF-8 wasn't designed by California hippies. It was designed in New Jersey by a Louisianan (Ken Thompson) and a Canadian (Rob Pike).

IvyMike12y ago

I think what he's saying is we had unicode in the form of UCS-2 but Silicon Valley programmers refused to use it because it was wasteful.

When Thompson and Pike finally invented UTF-8 was when things started getting moving.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

2 comments

peapicker12y ago

Joel is pretty good, but UTF-8 wasn't designed by California hippies. It was designed in New Jersey by a Louisianan (Ken Thompson) and a Canadian (Rob Pike).

IvyMike12y ago

I think what he's saying is we had unicode in the form of UCS-2 but Silicon Valley programmers refused to use it because it was wasteful.

When Thompson and Pike finally invented UTF-8 was when things started getting moving.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse