[captn3m0]

I'm assuming this doesn't take care of context?

For eg:

String s = "A != B";

would render the ligature inside the string?

[altern8tif]

I don't think Fira Code recognizes context. It just parses the characters and renders multi-character glyphs into a single one.

So the inequality inside the string will be afforded the same treatment as an inequality anywhere else in the code.

[return0]

it doesn't unless you use a different font for strings. But it seems that would be fine in your example