For all we know the document is from two decades ago.

Practically speaking, for maximum lengths, you generally want to limit code points or bytes, not characters. You don't want to allow some ZALGO monstrosity in a password that is 5 characters but 500 bytes.

For exact lengths, you often have a restricted character set (like for phone numbers) and can validate both characters and length with a regex. Or the length in bytes works for 0–9.

Unless you're involved in text layout, you actually usually don't wind up needing the exact length in characters of arbitrary UTF-8 text.

A slogan doesn't make something true.

And more specifically, your torso can be roasting while the freezing wind is giving your face frostbite, and your legs are frigid.

There's a reason why skiers wear face masks and huge goggles and snow pants. Not usually very practical in cities, however.

It wasn't. 80s TV shows and movies were overwhelmingly recorded on film. Primarily because it was much easier to edit film than tape.

And we are streaming a ton of them now that they've gone back and scanned the original film in 4K.

It's awesome. Heck you can watch I Love Lucy from 1951 in glorious high definition, sharper than anyone ever viewed it originally. It's basically magic.

If you want 1980's, go watch St. Elsewhere or Cheers. They have cinema detail now instead of the fuzzy TV detail you would have seen in the 80's.

Because half the year it's freezing cold or blistering hot?

With CitiBike and so many bike lanes it basically already is a biker's paradise. Obviously there could be lots more improvements, but the people who want to bike already do.

You joke, but the reality is going to be dynamic self-driving buses that don't have preset routes or stops but respond to instant demand.

You'll pay $$$ for a nonstop ride into midtown in a dedicated vehicle, or $ for a short dedicated ride to a self-driving bus you only need to wait a few minutes for, and which will drop you off on your destination block.

So yes -- self-driving buses seamlessly integrated into ride sharing are certainly going to be a major part of 21st century urban transportation. Which will save a ton of time compared to current buses.

Yup. But to be clear, in Unicode a string will index code points, not characters. E.g. a single emoji can be made of multiple code points, as well as certain characters in certain languages. The Unicode name for a character like this is a "grapheme", and grapheme splitting is so complicated it generally belongs in a dedicated Unicode library, not a general-purpose string object.