Internationalis(z)ing Code - Computerphile
Why Stack Overflow recommends it
Stack Overflow users link it when answering questions about dates, weeks, string formats and UTF-8, to show that internationalisation is far harder than it looks.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2017 to 2019.
What it is
A short Computerphile explainer in which Tom Scott walks through the pitfalls of internationalising software, in the same spirit as his well-known timezones video. It covers why assumptions about dates, text and cultural formats break when code has a global audience.
What people said
Recommends Nick is tired · 2017-11 · Stack Overflow · on “How do languages represent UTF-8 under the hood?”
@BasileStarynkevitch Related to your comment and last edit, the video that got me onto the UTF-8 one was the internationalisation [this video] which describes issues like these
Cites mcarton · 2018-08 · Stack Overflow · on “How can I store a format string template outside of my source code?”
Note that translating a program is a problem [LINK] far [this video] far [LINK] more [LINK] complicated [LINK] than just having a few template strings.
Cites Christopher · 2018-10 · Stack Overflow · on “How to get fixed error related Parsing the DateTime object?”
@user10489212: There is no "international" Format. There is one format for each culture. [this video] And internationalization is not a trivial thing by any measurement.
Cites Christopher · 2018-10 · Stack Overflow · on “Determining whether a string is date or a number”
"More complexity comes when you consider other cultures. " You either leave the picking of the Culture Format to the Parse/ToString Funcitons - wich automatically querries the Users Settings to get it. Or you pick a single fixed culture to be used at all endpoints. anything else will just not work. That path lies madness and no easy answer: [this video]
Cites Christopher · 2019-10 · Stack Overflow · on “how to check if dates exist in a list of all the weeks of a year”
You got a problem there. The "start of the week" is not internationally defined. For some it starts on Monday, for others on Saturday. Welcome to Time, Timzones and Internationalsiation. Try not to rip your hair out: [LINK] | [this video] | Also how certain are you, that you actually **need** this function? Is there somebody elses code that could do it for you?
Critical Christopher · 2018-02 · Stack Overflow · on “C# - Check if a given date is the Fifth week day of a month?”
You era now dealing with Dates, Timeszones and internationalsiation now. American and Brits can not even agree at wich **day** the week starts on, wich makes this whole question a tangeled mess. My only advice? Most of the functions relating to dates do use the current Windows Format selection. Wich might include that data. Aside from that ideal case I would jsut never touch those thematics: [LINK] [this video]