It seems I got a reply to my bug report on ligatures in Visual Studio. Not really what I was hoping for, but not entirely unexpected, I guess:
Hi, thank you for reporting this issue. We do realise that some fonts are not optimal for code editing, so while this is a problem, this is not something we are able to address.
Thank you,
Prasadi de Silva
VS Program Manager
I would say “not entirely unexpected” because it’s true: some fonts really aren’t appropriate for coding (some have even gone so far as to say that using Calibri is a violation of some natural law :))
So I guess I’ll just have to live with it (or choose a font which doesn’t contain ligatures). But it say that it “is not something we are able to fix” is wrong, it’s not impossible to fix, but maybe it’s just not worth it.