"Then you have a text file format that is trivial to write out and read in, with no restrictions on the text in fields or the need to try and escape characters."

Not being a "developer", I have been productively using these non-printing separators for personal use as a UNIX-like OS and text-only internet user for close to three decades. Of course I have a bias for ASCII and against Unicode and I only use the English language for computing. Perhaps this is why using the ASCII charactors, including the record and file separators, work so well for me.

Using ASCII non-printing separators might not work for everybody but it would be false to assume it will not work for anybody.

Historically ASCII worked for some computer users. It still does today. For those who stil use it like myself.

The author states, "The most anoying[sic] thing about the whole problem is that it was solved by design in the ASCII character set."

"Developers" might not use the ASCII solution but that does not prevent other computer owners from using it.