WHAT EVERY PROGRAMMER ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT ENCODINGS AND CHARACTER SETS TO WORK WITH TEXT

Summary from the TLDR Dev newsletter

Computers store text as bits, and encodings define how these bits translate into human-readable characters through lookup tables. Problems happen when text is interpreted with the wrong encoding, leading to incorrect character display. It's best to consistently use Unicode (specifically UTF-8) and proper encoding conversion techniques to prevent data loss and guarantee accurate text representation.