It drives me bonkers. Use UTF-8. Use other encodings only when talking to systems that require it, and use those other encodings only when actually reading or writing the data. Translate to UTF-8 at the earliest opportunity, and translate from UTF-8 at the last possible moment, and only if you must.
This isn't the 90s. This stuff is basically solved now, except people can't be bothered to use the solution.
This isn't the 90s. This stuff is basically solved now, except people can't be bothered to use the solution.