https://docs.raku.org/language/unicode_ascii just kind of rubs me as the wrong way to go.

While I realize '…' and '...' are syntactically equivalent, it means that if someone is writing $foo³ and I need to change that to $foo² - I can't do that without changing it to $foo**2 ... and that results in two different styles of code (unicode and ascii) in the same file which means that future maintainer me has more difficulty.

(note: I still don't know how to type ³ - that's me copying out of another file)

If you use ² and ³ a lot in your work, I'm sure you can install a macro / keybinding / whatever to access them quickly.

And in any other case, https://docs.raku.org/language/unicode_ascii is a bit of a Rosetta stone in the cases you don't know how to type them, because you can copy / paste them from there.

Finally, the Raku documentation also contains information on how to type these unicode characters on your OS: https://docs.raku.org/language/unicode_entry .

I'm ok with APL doing all its special characters, but if you can write the same syntax in two ways, one of which is much more accessible than the other, then the less accessible way was a poor design choice.

Allowing for two styles for the same syntax can (and will) lead to multiple styles depending on who wrote that line. Conflicting styles (mixing tabs and spaces anyone?) in turn makes the maintenance of the code more difficult and time consuming which is something that is often forgotten in the rush to write code.

They write stuff like:

    Tyᴹ : (A : Ty) → {X₀ X₁ : Set} → (X₀ → X₁) → Tyᴬ A X₀ → Tyᴬ A X₁ → Set
    Tyᴹ ι      Xᴹ α₀ α₁ = Xᴹ α₀ ≡ α₁
    Tyᴹ (ι⇒ A) Xᴹ α₀ α₁ = ∀ x → Tyᴹ A Xᴹ (α₀ x ) (α₁ (Xᴹ x))

(Sample taken from https://github.com/AndrasKovacs/thesis/blob/main/agda/Simple... - learning the language is still on my todo list.)

      int x = 3;
      if (x<-5) {
        return 1;
      }

      int x = 3;
      if (x⬅5) {
        return 1;
      }