FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

Ligatures, IMO, make for a bad coding editor experience. No, I do not want >> parsed as a right shift when it's actually used as two adjacent template delimiters. And no, I'm not okay with the inconsistency that results from the usage of different operators from one programming language to another. Want to change a != to a == operator? Enjoy futzing with placing the cursor properly. It's a cute idea, but I found it more annoying to use in…

As a developer, I have spent years writing and learning to parse the meaning of sequences like ==, ===, <=, ~=, and so on. For nearly all of us, the ligatures in this font are completely new. I think it's a creative and interesting idea, but it means re-training my brain to recognize them, which would take time. And even if I could get my preferred editors to work with it, I would see the traditional symbols when reading code…

Some of the “glyphs” (is that the correct term?), like the arrows (->, =>) look nice but some of the other ones (!=, !==) look too similar and would require a double take to be perceived correctly. It’s an interesting idea and I like the use of the “hidden” features of the True/Open Type System, but I think some of the symbols need a bit more help. Very cool though!

I would disagree that the eye spends any extra time "joining" multi-character sequences. I think it's a matter of what you're used to looking at. I find many of these ligatures harder to recognize than the familiar ascii representations.