Why UTF-8/16 character encodings?

[Jakob Ovrum]

On Monday, 27 May 2013 at 23:05:46 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I've recently come to the opinion that that's a bad idea, and D 
> should not support it.

Honestly, removing support for non-ASCII characters from 
identifiers is the worst idea you've had in a while. There is an 
_unfathomable amount_ of code out there written in non-English 
languages but hamfisted into an English-alphabet representation 
because the programming language doesn't care to support it. The 
resulting friction is considerable.

You seem to attribute particular value to personal anecdotes, so 
here's one of mine: I personally know several prestigious 
universities in Europe and Asia which teach programming using 
Java and/or C with identifiers being in an English-alphabet 
representation of the native non-English language. Using the 
English language for identifiers is usually a sanctioned 
alternative, but not the primary modus operandi. I also know 
several professional programmers using their native non-English 
language for identifiers in production code.

Please reconsider.