Also ligatures in a monospaced font are going to tell you they’re multiple characters because they’re either fat af or misaligned. You know it’s coming.
To be honest though I think I like those big fat commas the best. As someone pointed out, using dot and comma as semantically important in software is a mistake because they only differ by one pixel.
Vertical columns of background have, until ligatures, been a bullet proof means for brains to delineate characters. Is it possible to figure out with an increased cognitive load? Yes. Is it exactly as easy as without? No.
I'm confused, because I can delineate the characters in your comment fine, and this is with my browser's default sans-serif proportional typeface. I tend to read English text left-to-right, though, so if others are more comfortable reading top-to-bottom (or bottom-to-top, or middle-out), then my apologies.
To be honest though I think I like those big fat commas the best. As someone pointed out, using dot and comma as semantically important in software is a mistake because they only differ by one pixel.