I've been using proportional fonts for programming for more than thirty years. Makes things much easier to read and it's only a problem where people try to make patterns out of the code

Nope. It might improve readability for individual words, but for blocks of code with similar features at irregular lengths, uniform kerning provides structure and a bunch of clean edges that help you visually orient yourself. Just like title text and body text generally need different kerning, so do body text and code.

(As a full time developer for over a decade that got a design degree, I have experimented with it a lot!)