&gt; Does that at least work for all Unicode characters that support case distinction...<p>Erlang was designed and first written back in the 1980&#x27;s, so characters that fall within the latin1 encoding are the only acceptable characters in atom and variable names. However, UTF-8 source files are <i>fully</i> supported, as is Unicode in lists and binaries. There is a proposal to make Unicode characters accepted for atom and variable names, but it hasn&#x27;t been accepted yet, as the details are (as you allude to) tricky. [0]<p>&gt; The designer of a non-clusterfuck syntax would be offended by [the conclusion that I came to].<p>I can&#x27;t agree with that. Initially, I thought that the case-significance was strange, but -as I used the language- I quickly found that the ability to distinguish at a glance between an atom and non-atom type is <i>very</i> valuable. These are things that you don&#x27;t understand until you learn about the language, and maybe actually <i>use</i> it some.<p>Erlang&#x27;s syntax is strange, but not even within ICBM distance to being a clusterfuck. Frankly, Python&#x27;s significant whitespace has caused me <i>far</i> more lost hours than any strangeness in Erlang&#x27;s syntax.<p>&gt; I only formed this hypothesis because I&#x27;m jaded.<p>Heh. I expect that the fact that you&#x27;ve likely seen <i>many</i> imperative and some functional languages in your day, and that Erlang is -despite its syntax quirks- a language that is rather well designed and makes sense once you look at it for a few minutes, has far more to do with it than your disaffectedness. :) [1]<p>From your other comment:<p>&gt; I promise you, I will not write another word anywhere about Erlang.<p>That&#x27;s a pity. Erlang is <i>rather</i> quite good at what it&#x27;s designed to do, and a <i>real</i> pleasure to use. <i>Many</i> folks report that Elixir is <i>at least</i> as rewarding to work with.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erlang.org&#x2F;eeps&#x2F;eep-0040.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erlang.org&#x2F;eeps&#x2F;eep-0040.html</a><p>[1] As an aside, I note that in your <i>opening</i> comment, you mention that the syntax is &quot;incomprehensible rubbish&quot;, but yet you correctly determined a pertinent feature of the language syntax in very little time at all. This kinda puts the lie to your claims of incomprehensibility. ;)