Why UTF-8/16 character encodings?

[Torje Digernes]

On Tuesday, 28 May 2013 at 00:34:20 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 28 May 2013 09:05, Walter Bright 
> <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>
>> On 5/27/2013 3:18 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>>
>>> Well, D *does* support non-English identifiers, y'know... for 
>>> example:
>>>
>>>         void main(string[] args) {
>>>                 int число = 1;
>>>                 foreach (и; 0..100)
>>>                         число += и;
>>>                 writeln(число);
>>>         }
>>>
>>> Of course, whether that's a good practice is a different 
>>> story. :)
>>>
>>
>> I've recently come to the opinion that that's a bad idea, and 
>> D should not
>> support it.
>>
>
> Why? You said previously that you'd love to support extended 
> operators ;)

I find features such as support for uncommon symbols in variables 
a strength as it makes some physics formulas a bit easier to read 
in code form, which in my opinion is a good thing.