the main problem is keyboard layout and lack of easy access to ^ in most of them. not everyone uses US layout, it's actually minority of computer users. plus, the notion of whether the ^ goes before or after variable can cause a lot of programming and code reviewing issues. but it's just a personal opinion, obviously.
Odin uses curly braces which (in QWERTY) are shifted and typed with your pinky—the worst possible combination. Are there layouts where ^ is worse than that?
this could result in endless thread so all i will say is that you have * physically available as stand-alone key on the numerical side of every keyboard ever made(unless you are a weirdo(=micro minority) and use the variously mutilated physical keyboard layouts) and & is physically available as stand-alone key on iso 105 layout, for example, but most importantly it is a character widely used in most languages as actual character, whereas ^ is really not.
