I'm unconvinced, because as far as I'm concerned ligatures are a viewing enhancement and have nothing to do with writing the code. Maybe there are (extreme) ed

I'm unconvinced, because as far as I'm concerned ligatures are a viewing enhancement and have nothing to do with writing the code. Maybe there are (extreme) edge cases where I might accidentally confuse a Unicode code point with a ligature, but since those symbols are (relatively) difficult to access on most keyboards to begin with, I don't think any practical difficulty would ever present itself. I've often thought that smarter IDEs should be able to recognize the language and display code in the user's preferred style with better use of screen space. For instance, a Java class could be displayed with the class signature in a fixed header; enclosed methods could be displayed starting at the left, instead of indented; stacks of annotations could be replaced by a gutter icon with a hover/click to show/expand/close; methods could be grouped and ordered by particular criteria; etc., all while the underlying source file remains intact.