I try not to get sucked into age-old programming "religious wars". You know, things like tabs vs. spaces, light vs. dark IDE, semicolons in JavaScript, etc. I have my opinions on them (like everyone else), and I have my rationale as to why: tabs (faster), dark IDE (easier on my eyes), and yes to semicolons (readability) – but I'm not going to waste any time writing about those opinions (beyond this paragraph, I guess...)

There is one topic, however, that I do have a stronger opinion on, and that topic is programming font ligatures. I'm still not going to get into a heated debate over the topic with someone, as it is (like many things) personal preference. That said, I did want to share my thoughts on why I dislike them.

If you've never heard of font ligatures before or have never seen them in use, they're elements within a font designed to replace multi-character sequences with a single symbol. Generically, this could mean turning "ae" into æ. Within the context of programming, ligatures turn sequences like ==, ===, !=, !==, >=, <=, =>, etc. into single symbols (this occurs as you type; you don't need to do anything special). They look like this:

Image courtesy of Scott Hansleman (https://hanselman.com/blog/MonospacedProgrammingFontsWithLigatures.aspx)

Now, you may look at that and think, "hey, those thing look pretty cool!" In my opinion, "looking cool" is about all those things have going for them.

My two chief complaints about programming font ligatures are:

1. The ligature as a single symbol introduces ambiguity as to the individual keystrokes used to produce it (in some cases more so than others).
2. It can be difficult to mentally reverse the ligature into its original character sequence without some context (meaning that they are to an extent language-specific).

While many languages support Unicode and some even allow Unicode variable names, I am not aware of any language which requires typing any character not found on a standard keyboard as part of its core language design. Honestly, I'd be surprised if one existed. Every character you need to type is on your keyboard, and once you type it, you know you typed it because you can see it. If you type <==>, you know you typed two equal signs because you see two equal signs.

With ligatures, however, it can be difficult to know exactly what you're looking at. In some cases, like combining >= into a single symbol, it's more obvious (but more on this later). When we start combining == and ===, however, I actually find it takes more mental energy to read the code. We lost that little bit of space between the individual equal signs, so now in addition to my brain trying to decide how many characters wide that single "ligature equal" is, it has to count the number of lines vertically within the ligature to determine if it's a double or triple equal. I think my brain could (and should) be doing more valuable work.

For example, look at line #10 in the screenshot above. HTML comments start and end with <!-- and --!>. At first glance, however, I couldn't tell if the "HTML Comment" text had three dashes in the opening tag or two. My inclination was to guess "two", as that's the convention. I had to look at line #9 to try to line up the word "tag" with the dashes, and I don't really want to have to do that. In fact, even after reading line #10 several times, it's still hard for me to tell at a glance if there are three dashes on the left and two on the right, or two and two, or what (primarily because the <! is mashed into what almost looks like one character width).

One of the key reasons many (most, I'd assume) people use monospaced fonts for coding is that each character is on a fixed and easily identifiable boundary. By removing the inherent visible spacing between characters, ligatures negate that benefit, and I find myself constantly looking to the line above or below it for reference to measure how wide in characters the ligature is. I don't want to have to do that. Ever.

I think the arrow at the end of line #8 is another perfect example. I don't actually know what that symbol is nor how it was typed. Is that <=< ? Or <==< ? Or...? Is it just a fancy arrow? Or did the font author get creative with something like a bitwise shift operator <<= ?

This I think demonstrates both of my chief complaints pretty well. I can't tell which keystrokes make that thing up, and without knowing the context it's used in, I'm kind of lost. By context, I mean this: in the screenshot below, I can tell the language is C#, so it's more obvious to me that the arrow ligature is => versus ==> or anything else. If I didn't know C#, however, this may not have been as obvious. But what about that <==< arrow on line #8? Unless I know what language that's used in and what it does, I don't even know for certain how to type it. At the end of the day, I shouldn't have to be familiar with the language to know how to produce the ligature.

I also don't like the <= ligature shown below. Whereas at least the "does not equal" ligature clearly spans the width of the letters "a" and "l" above it, the <= ligature almost looks like it's sitting on a single character width. I'm assuming that, since it is in fact two characters, the ligature is actually straddling both l's in "null" below it, and I could see myself being driven nuts by this.

Image courtesy of Dan Clarke (https://www.danclarke.com/fira-code)

I've actually read some pretty opposing opinions regarding ligatures, but two that stand out to me are:

1. "Ligatures are more for advanced developers"
2. "Ligatures are great for beginners"

Concerning the first point, I've been writing code most of my life, so I'd like to consider myself a fairly advanced developer (if I had to pick between that and "a beginner"), but there are many, many languages I've never worked with, so that makes me a beginner in all of those languages.

Imagine my surprise when – for the first time – I try to work in Erlang with font ligatures turned on (for the record, I don't know Erlang). One of two things is going to happen regardless: either I'm going to see a cool-looking "does not equal" ligature and fail to realize that I have to type /= or =/= in Erlang to make it or I'm just going to see /= and =/= and wonder if they actually mean "does not equal", since they weren't turned into ligatures.

I'm guessing it's not the former; two different character sequences which produce the same ligature seems like a recipe for madness. If it's the latter, that makes programming ligature fonts at least somewhat language specific. If I can't rely on a "does not equal" ligature appearing as I move from language to language, I don't find ligatures very useful.

And what about the <> form of "does not equal" some languages use? Does it get turned into a "does not equal" ligature? Maybe, maybe not. In the case of Fira Code, it's turned into what looks like a diamond, which personally conveys nothing to me. It's up to the font designer to put the ligatures in place, so I suppose a given font could turn <> into a "does not equal" ligature if designed that way. But if it doesn't, what's the point? And if it does, what about the (future?) language where <> doesn't mean "does not equal" ? Something about language-specific fonts just doesn't sit well with me. With great editors like VSCode enabling us to move from language to language to language quickly within the same tool, a language-specific font just seems wrong to me, even if the font does include ligatures which span a number of different languages.

Concerning the second point above, I don't think ligatures are great for beginners for the exact reasons I cited above. For someone new to programming in general, I think ligatures are a barrier to entry. In many languages, <= obviously means "less than or equal to", and if this gets replaced with a ligature, someone new to programming will understand what this means. But what happens when next time, they try to type =< (versus <=) and don't get a ligature? Isn't "less than or equal to" the same thing as "equal to or less than" ? I think it's important for a new programmer to understand that each character typed and its order is significant, and ligatures mask this by hiding the underlying characters' order in some cases.

I think even for an experienced developer working in a new language, ligatures can be confusing. If !== is turned into a ligature but /= or =/= are not, I would think it would be reasonable to assume that /= (in particular) does not mean "does not equal" in that language – even if it does.

For what it's worth, in Erlang, "less than or equal to" is represented by =< not <=. Whether this gets replaced by a ligature or not, I don't know (again, I'm assuming not), but regardless, I think it poses a problem. If it doesn't, then there's the matter of consistency: <= gets a ligature while =< does not. It it does, there's the matter of context: if I simply see a "does not equals" ligature, I don't how to type this without knowing the context/language around it. Is it !=? =/=? We're back to trying to compare the ligature's width to adjacent text to figure out how to type it (one equal sign or two?), and I don't want to do that. Ever.

To me, ligatures feel like a solution to a non-problem. Frankly, what's wrong with looking at individual characters? How are ligatures making you more productive or your code more sound? When it comes to something like light vs. dark IDE or color theme, I don't think most of us pick one simply because it looks cool. How easy it is on the eyes, how the color scheme helps draw your eyes to key elements of the language such as symbols, keywords, etc... those things matter. I don't see the same virtue in ligatures, and I wouldn't personally use them just because they look cool.

I'm open to change, so who knows... in time, maybe I'll come around. For the record: I kind of doubt it. I've done my fair share of font switching (and usually end up back at Consolas), but I've never bothered with ligatures.

In all fairness, I've read a lot of comments from people who love ligatures, so as I'd said, it's a matter of preference and probably just another war for the ages like tabs vs. spaces. I'd actually invite you (if you haven't already) to take a look at a ligature font like Fira Code and form your own opinion: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode.

For what it's worth, I had to borrow two images of ligatures in use because I don't even have a ligature font (such as Fira Code) installed!