I'm a big fan of ligatures and it is now a "must have" when choosing a coding font for me. The "fundamental structure of the code" doesn't change, all those sa

I'm a big fan of ligatures and it is now a "must have" when choosing a coding font for me. The "fundamental structure of the code" doesn't change, all those same mostly-ASCII code points are there unchanged. (Copy and paste still works. Source control works, obviously.) It's just a presentation thing. There's also an argument (often used most especially by Functional Programming proponents and languages) that the "fundamental structure of the code" is actually the math behind the code and our mostly-ASCII assortment of programming language symbols are the easier-to-type/encode/transmit compromise of the mathematical fundamentals. From that perspective, ligatures are more "fundamental" by better expressing their mathematical underpinnings than the raw text that describes them. > it just seems to make me have to pause and think more A classic Python mantra is that "code is read far more often than it is written". If it might be a little slower to write, but it speeds up reading comprehension, that alone can be a major productivity win, per that mantra. Of course, I think there's a familiarity thing at play here, too. Just like most things we learn, there's an early learning curve where it seems harder to work with something like ligatures because you are unfamiliar with them, but eventually you gain familiarity and are just as fast writing it as you were before.