Newbie question about text encoding

[Rustom Mody]

On Friday, March 6, 2015 at 2:33:11 PM UTC+5:30, Rustom Mody wrote:
> Lets please stick to UTF-16 shall we?
> 
> Now tell me:
> - Is it broken or not?
> - Is it widely used or not?
> - Should programmers be careful of it or not?
> - Should programmers be warned about it or not?

Also:
Can a programmer who is away from UTF-16 in one part of the system (say by using python3)
assume he is safe all over?