Well I used to think that UTF-8 symbols are terrible, until I saw how Julia implement it

Most special symbols have escapable names so for example Julia have a composition operator (∘) In the repl or supported editors (atom and vs code), if you type \circ then press <tab> the repl or the editor will replace that with the symbol ∘

Now, I am not saying that this is better than ascii characters, I still prefer ascii characters, and I still find that Unicode symbol even with good editor support are harder to type, and also in some case like in the case this composition operator ∘ hard to read

I just don't think its not terrible anymore, its passable, and I understand why some people might like it more, but good editor support is a must

How is this terrible? Isn't this pretty standard in all big languages?

It is decidedly undesireable for "⋄˄∕≡·‒⁇⁆․⌉⌋"[1] to be a valid indentifier. Especially if, as appears to be the case, "foo[⋄˄/≡·-⁇].⌉⌋"[0] is a valid expression.

0: foo[diamond_caret / indentical_middot - questionquestion ] . ceil_floor

1: utf8: E2 8B 84 CB 84 E2 88 95 E2 89 A1 CE 87 E2 80 92 E2 81 87 E2 81 86 E2 80 A4 E2 8C 89 E2 8C 8B

I know you can use emoji as variables in Ruby. Unsure if you can in Python.

Imo it's fine to allow Unicode. Latin will still be the de facto standard character set, but it allows international users to code natively and allows for Easter eggs.

Since PEP 3131 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3131/) Python supports unicode in names, but only letters, not emoji. I have occasionally used variable names like ϕ when transcribing a formula in toy code.

The unicode is normalized. That can be used for trickery in rare circumstances. "global" is a keyword, but "𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥" isn't, so you can use that if you absolutely require an attribute called "global".

Doesn't Python 3 exactly do this? Not saying I would use non-ascii characters in variable names but presumably populations that don't use the Latin alphabet have different use cases?

Not quite, as it only supports letters. This can be annoying with some mathematical symbols, e.g. IIRC ∇f won't work. Having Greek letters is useful, but I think it should go further, like this, so definitely not terrible.

how else are we going to use canadian aboriginal syllabic characters to represent templates