I happen to be of the same opinion as the author, but their reasons are not very compelling. Unicode is an encoding tool, fonts are a display tool. And just b

I happen to be of the same opinion as the author, but their reasons are not very compelling. Unicode is an encoding tool, fonts are a display tool. And just because the right symbol happens to be available in unicode doesn't mean it's right or easy to use it in every context ; especially when writing a compiler or when writing code. Who wants to have to write ≠ in their code dozens of time a day, without a keyboard made for this? Fonts exist just for that: decide what the encoded text you have should look like. They are not competing with encoding, they're complementing it. Different fonts exist because people have different opinions about what's best for them to read. The second point that is raised is a matter of tradeoffs and personal taste. If someone feels like seeing ≠ instead of /= or != in a given context is worth a surprise once a year, who am I to say they're wrong? It's not like I have to use their font, or like they can't use different fonts for different situations.