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Comment by memorable | Hacker News Reader

IMO ligatures makes it easier to recognize common symbols used in programming languages and also doesn't affect readability much. Maybe I am younger, but I don't see the problem here.

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I don't like it because it tends to combine two distinct characters into one (visually). A great example is '<=' being transformed into '≤' (Pragmata Pro[1] does this) I expect to see two characters, but instead I see one and expect to see a syntax error.

[1] https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

You expect that exactly because (like me) you've been seeing it for a long time. I suspect the age correlation parent suggested is a big factor

I don't know about this claimed correlation- I'm 50 and love ligatures

It's almost like there are different people who like different things and it's impossible to turn a subjective thing into an objective thing.

Nah, I heard someone on the internet saying it was an age thing.

Also it's incredibly annoying when a language uses `<=` for something that's not a comparison.

Julia was right in allowing developers use unicode for variables and operators, so if you want ≤ you simply use that directly (or type \leq in your editor).

Note that PragmataPro offers both ligature and non-ligature styles.

It's not about age. I'm rather oldschool, and I like programming ligatures very much. When => intended to imitate thick arrow, seeing thick arrow instead is reasonable, I think

True, but <> in Perl is called the diamond while, in other languages it means “not equal”. If we take ligatures seriously, we’d need them to be language-aware to select the appropriate concept. And for a font to have to be aware of all languages that can express ideas with it is a violent violation of the separation of concerns principle.

If languages opt to make “≠” equivalent to “!=“, match all styles of open/close quotes, and enable me to attribute a value to a variable using an arrow, that’s great.

In the meantime, I’m not sure they are a net positive in all cases and fear they may drive unfortunate syntax choices for people who design languages.

PureScript and Haskell <> is concat in most Preludes. However, both languages allow you create your own infix operators and you can use Unicode.

>If we take ligatures seriously, we’d need them to be language-aware to select the appropriate concept.

It's possible in Emacs: to enable relevant ligatures for an active mode.

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