Markdown uses backticks to denote inline code which should get special (typically monospace) formatting, org uses the tilde character.
Now I know that org is not markdown, is far more powerful than markdown, and is not (mostly) the same use cases as markdown. But this one use case *does* overlap. And the backticks thing is becoming so ingrained that not only do I reach for it all the time, but I've seen it crop up on this very mailing list and even in some README.org documents.
I would like to submit that org consider adopting backticks as an alternate way of denoting inline code.
Aside from any official movement, I would like to add this to my own files - is there a straightforward way to extend the org parser to do this?