I actually love using them, especially with Fira Code.

Why? Not poking at you, just curious.

Not OP but for me it's just a preference like a color scheme is to anybody else. It is visually appealing and helps to distinguish different aspects of some context specific things.

I get that it's not for everybody but being so against it is something I really do not understand.

Why use color schemes or different fonts at all then?

A font is pretty different sort of thing. I'm questioning why you would want multiple characters combined.

Why?

E.g., it's easier to count the number of =s if there's no ligature.

What use cases do you have to regularly count characters eyeballing it? The characters are still distinct and equal width in the code and the line length doesn't shift, so it's just a visual thing...

= vs == vs ===.

I'm still not sure what you're trying to do...