[samatman]

Someone always says this when a punycode link shows up.

I'm glad they don't. What you see? That's the link. It's what the browser sends, it's what DNS resolves: it's the link. Displaying it as Unicode is just a display option, and it's one which opens up all manner of mischief through confusables.

It's a hacker culture choice, and it's one I appreciate.

[TRiG_Ireland]

On the other hand, that's a rather ango-centric viewpoint.

[samatman]

It is! So kind of you to notice. Perhaps you could also notice that English is the language used on Hacker News.

I'm quite sure a website centered in a different cultural landscape might choose a different convention. Good for them, I say.

If URLs start being Unicode, and not an ASCII encoding which is sometimes displayed as Unicode, that would be a different story. But that's not how things are.