Am I the only person who doesn't love ligatures? I mean, I like the concept, but I really don't want != to be hijacked into ≠ in my code. IMO ligatures should try to change the underlying text representation as little as possible.
I like them, and I believe most fonts that support ligatures can work without enabling them so it's opt-in
EDIT: I've reread your comment and I think you may have a misunderstanding about how ligatures work. They do not modify source text, it's purely a rendering thing. Your text remains != under the hood.