> How do you plan to reverse engineer the underlying keystrokes if you look at some ligature ridden code on a tutorial website?
Copy and paste it in a different font.
Well, you just have to learn all the popular ligature forms, just like you have to learn all the popular variations of letter forms (e.g. "a" and "g" both have very different variations that are popular in different typefaces).
It is nice to read. That's not the only thing we do with code. Ligatures are fine for yourself in a private setting.
It's popularity is alarming.