In a pure UTF-8 world we would not need it, sure. I get that point. But what do you want to do with 40+ years worth of text files that came after 7-bit ASCII, where they may coexist with UTF-8? If we want to preserve our past, the practical solution is that the OS or app has a default character set for 8-bit text encoding, in addition to supporting (and using as a default) UTF-8.
I also agree that "BOM" is the wrong name for an UTF-8... BOM. Byte order is not the issue. But still, it's a header that says that the file, even if empty, is UTF-8. Detecting an 8-bit legacy character set is much more difficult that recognizing (skipping) a BOM.
I also agree that "BOM" is the wrong name for an UTF-8... BOM. Byte order is not the issue. But still, it's a header that says that the file, even if empty, is UTF-8. Detecting an 8-bit legacy character set is much more difficult that recognizing (skipping) a BOM.