Since I started using font ligatures everywhere (terminals, text editors) they just feel right to me. I don't care (usually) about seeing the exact bytes in tex

Since I started using font ligatures everywhere (terminals, text editors) they just feel right to me. I don't care (usually) about seeing the exact bytes in text - after all, since we adopted Unicode we also got multi bye characters and multiple characters that are rendered as one. We even have total madness such as Han unification. Given how messy the whole thing is, it definitely won't all burn down in flames because of a bit of eye candy. Looking at real arrows is IMHO easier than ASCII art. The reason why current programming languages use -> or >= is because it's hard to input those symbols on standard keyboards, but historically their real counterparts were used when readily available (just look at ALGOL).