The letter ℘: name and origin? (2017)

I must confess that I have an irrational fondness for the use of weird symbols in math and technical documents, whether it's for a homework assignment in school or a white-paper for work.

My unit tests are literally full of hieroglyphics. My favorite design doc to this day is one where I sprinkled Sumerian cuneiform throughout the text, e.g. 𒀭𒄑𒉋𒂵𒎌 and 𒂗𒆠𒄭 (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) instead of Alice and Bob.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, especially in code; apart from adding unnecessary confusion for the reader, this will also confuse some monospaced fonts.

Glad I’m not GPs coworker. Time to refactor Gilgamesh.

I just see boxes, not the cuneiform.

I've seen emoji used for Alice/Bob/Carol/etc which is a bit more widely supported than old dead scripts.

I await the inevitable mathematical constant unicorn emoji.

`pacman -S noto-fonts noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji`

I was following you up until that first comma.

Reminds me of Lamport's original paper on Paxos, in which he eschewed Alice, Bob, et al. in favor of ∆˘ικστρα, Γωυδα, Πνυeλ˘ι, and a whole host more.