> I don’t know whether this is just due to first-mover advantage or not but it also looks like more projects use spaces over tabs. So what’s the point of going against the tide where there does not seem to be a very powerful advantage anyway?

Sure, now. But, there was a time when I was a young man in college (circa 1997) where professors and the industry would push Tabs as a standard. Shortly after, the tides changed and we were all using spaces.

> Stop hard-wrapping and just use soft-wrapping

Who cares about grep? I mean, aside from the OP and probably many on here. Wrapping is a task that should be left up to the viewing device/software. It can be made to be responsive, which hard-wrapping cannot be.

> newline

This really should be a solved issue by now. Both as users and by software.