I'm guessing they'd say "because it looks nicer". I'm not aware of a language that treats it specially.

I do think I've seen it before, I don't think it's a new idea. Probably some typographic tradition from when it was used as a section separator in prose.

I’ve not seen it in code, but if you were writing prose you might use it as a section break.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterism_(typography)

Edit: it’s called an Asterism