I don’t think anyone is criticizing its utility, just that the syntax of 2-5(?) underscores in a row isn’t something that is DX friendly.

The ugliness is intentional. Nobody wants to name their cool new variable __hot__singleton__in__your__area__.

They are called dunder methods, meaning "double under". It's 2 underscores.

I've had snippets in my editor for approximately 15 years at this point so I don't have to manually type any of the dunder methods. Would recommend!

The syntax is exactly two, not 2-5.

I think the point was: who can know by looking at it.

Anyone using a monospacdd font, a font where underscores are separated, or a run-together proportional font that they are even a little bit familiar with, because of the relative width of underscores and other characters.

Which, between them, covers approximately everyone.

I mean, maybe you should use a font that doesn't make it hard to figure that out. Next you're gonna say we should ban 0s and Os, Is and ls, because your font doesn't allow you to figure out which one it is.