So you are the person that ruins it for everyone (are you emacs user by any chance?). Tabs are more versatile, you can even use proportional fonts with them. Projects end up using tabs because many people end up mixing them together (unknowingly or in your case knowingly using configuration that is unavailable in many IDEs).

BTW when you mix spaces with tabs you eliminate all benefits that tabs give (for example you no longer can dynamically change tab size without ruining formatting.