<opinion>They are not helpful and only serve to obscure...</opinion> Personally -- after originally thinking like you -- I really enjoy ligatures in my code. I

<opinion>They are not helpful and only serve to obscure...</opinion> Personally -- after originally thinking like you -- I really enjoy ligatures in my code. I disable them for my terminal though. The same font can work both with and without ligatures, so it's not a negative if a font supports them. You can choose whether to enable them.