The issue is that people also share screenshots, and ligatures are not universally shaped or styled, unlike ASCII.
Most other ways of code sharing you just copy and paste into a non-ligature font if you need to.
Aside: "ASCII" symbols are neither universally shaped or styled either. The easiest and obvious example to mind is the plain 0, dotted 0, slashed 0 choice and confusion with nearby symbols such as O and o and θ (Theta, not far away in "Extended ASCII"). Similarly all the variations of lower-case L (versus 1 and i). Those choices vary considerably between fonts and are another huge reason some people prefer certain monospace fonts over others and the debate over "best" will likely be an ever ongoing one. You may not think these issues compare to ligature use, but it's exactly the same sort of style debates.