I sometimes wonder why languages use sequences like "->". This is clearly meant to represent an arrow, so why has noone ever taken the time to make sure an arrow character is defined, make sure it's possible to type it in most keyboard maps and use it in programming languages.

It can't be because physical keyboards wouldn't have the key, because my keyboard doesn't display a # symbol, but that is widely used.

I can only guess that the character sets and "what characters are easy to type into a computer" became standardised early on, and no individual language has been able to push such a change (Early in development a language has few users, thus no influence; Later in development, the language has been using "->" itself for a while, so it's less easy to change).

Also, proper languages like lisp use parentheses (), not curly braces. :p