I use the proper dashes, too, in prose (but when using TeX I use Unicode input these days). But even though some programming languages (such as Julia) would all

I use the proper dashes, too, in prose (but when using TeX I use Unicode input these days). But even though some programming languages (such as Julia) would allow one to use the different dashes for different purposes, I don’t think that would be a good idea: they look too similar in, as you say, in monospace fonts.