This goes down to the details like that you should either use spaces over tabs OR prescribe editor config such that the code looks similar on each machine.
Of course this doesn't automatically mean that code ligatures are harmful, but I would be quite wary of using them. At the very least it introduces some friction, not sure if the arguably lower mental load of using real mathematical symbols instead of the ASCII symbols makes up for it.
I guess my IDE choices never surface the issue for me... visually they just look the same. I cannot say which codebase uses spaces which uses tabs. I never even think about it. I just smash tab character and don't care that there have been spaces. Or enter or { and IDE does the indentation. I just choose not to press space 2-4-8-16 times in a row.
Now I hope I won't get bulldozed over by HN crowd...
With tabs pretty much every editor except something like notepad.exe could do it since ancient times, with spaces the editor needs to do a bit more processing, so you were a bit more restricted in editor choice, if you really were bothered so much by the indents chosen in the project.
So it is actually quite similar to the ligature discussion. It would be good if the code looked the same for everybody but now instead of saying "But 8-space indents waste so much space on the screen :(" some people now go "But I don't like seeing things like != or -> instead of modern Unicode symbols :("
These days, I try avoid them outside of makefiles.
That said, the original UNIX V7 implementation of /bin/sh didn’t distinguish different kinds of whitespace:
It's too bad spaces won, tabs is just correct I think, since one can configure the tabstop to use any indent size they would like. I'm quite tired of reading 2-space indent. Seems everything has moved this way now except python. I'm even seeing C with it, which is especially jarring. I think the languages that use braces for indentation particularly need 4. Python needs it least, and I can read Ruby because its blocks are delimited by words and it's bad style to write long methods
Granted, I'm also someone who heavily encourages the use of Black as the Python formatter in projects I'm on, specifically because it has no configurable options - can't have a holy war about formats if nothing can be changed.
The reason spaces won is that it's not (spaces) vs (tabs), it's (spaces) vs (tabs AND spaces).
Personally, I like them. They look pleasing and I never had issues distinguishing between the ligatures for ==, ===, and = itself.
https://github.com/samboy/CaulixtlaFonts/tree/main/MiscFonts...
For example, ligatures in Fira Code cannot be disabled when using the Cygwin terminal in Windows (mintty). In that application, for example, “===” looks like three continuous long lines atop each other in Fira Code, with no way to make it look like three equal signs again.
From https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
“Fira Code is not only about ligatures. Some fine-tuning is done for punctuation and frequent letter pairs.” Note that without ligature support, a lot of that fine tuning is lost.
Now, seriously, a programming font has no (and should never have) awareness of the computer language it's representing. Ligatures make sense if they present meaning in a way easier to read than the non-combined characters. I can't type := in APL and expect the REPL to think it's an attribution arrow (←).
I get APL is a rather extreme language to talk about, but this is one example where ligatures would harm the programmer (unless your editor replaces a ":=" with a "←"). Source code is a very precise language and the choice of characters you use matters a lot. A "<-" doesn't mean "←" unless the language declares so.
But also... I know I have the minority opinion on this. It absolutely should be opt-in, not opt-out. I think the past decade, I've been told the font tweaks I enable are incomprehensable to everyone I work with. The way I like my IDE fonts is far outside the bell curve (ligatures, cursive variants for some syntax, proportional variants for prose) so the fact that most new monospace code-focused fonts seem to align with my opinions should be concerning to font makers! I like that I don't have to patch a different font's italics into my code font anymore, but common sense says I SHOULD still have to do that!
I'm not sure however that the verb form makes all that much sense in the context the website uses it...
Ligation is (among other things) the act of applying a ligature. So it does make sense.
It is aggressive in its unicode support. You want to use vulgar fractions? Or Mayan numerals? They'll work. You want to use mathematical notation like ∈? It works.
You can literally do this:
`my $var = ⅒ + 2 + Ⅻ;`
I can't include an example here because VC News strips out math.
∂ₓₙ = [(₁ ⊗ ʹ) (₂ ⊗ ʹ) ( ⊗ ₁) ( ⊗ ₂)]
And last I checked, BPL is in the same boat.
say 42 ≤ 666; # True
say 42 ≠ 666; # True
say 42 ≥ 666; # False
For a full list, see https://docs.raku.org/language/unicode_ascii#Other_acceptabl...
(...I also find them annoying to look at, idk why)
Anyway, since you want a direct representation of the text - presumably, you configured your editor to render EOL sequences explicitly, to distinguish tabs from spaces, etc?
I don't like them because I never know what they actually stand for in ASCII.