1. I find it pretty suspect you intentionally don't use the default syntax highlighting in vscode, the editor you're using, as your baseline. Many of your comments just wouldn't hold nearly as much water if you did.
2. having keywords vs variable names vs functions be different colors helps you find misspellings, not the other way around. But that's almost beside the point, because it's your linter/intellisense/error checker's job to let you know when you have an obvious syntax error. You're also taking this as if you've just discovered this code block in the ether and have to debug it, rather that the reality that if you had actually been the author, you would have immediately noticed it, even without red squiggles, because it would be immediately obvious when you type it that it doesn't highlight as a keyword. Human brains are hardwired for pattern recognition, one could even argue it's the only thing the human brain is even good at.
3. I'm not sure where the notion of comments being grey is "tradition", but in practically every editor I've used, the default color for comments is a pretty easy to pick out green. Comments usually stick out like a sore thumb, in fact, as they typically don't share their color with any other syntax. Again, this points to you specifically picking out a non-default theme to make your points against.
4. "... gets so bad you can't see the base color" this isn't so much a thing, rather, the base color just isn't white. Which is because most people would agree that pure white on black is not pleasant to look at for long periods of time. There's a reason you don't see many dark mode highlighters use white. Again, default for vscode is a pleasant light blue. Plenty of contrast, but not so harsh it strains your eyes.
5. This is the most psychological, and subjective one, but plain, unhighlighted text just doesn't look like code. It looks like plaintext. Because plaintext is unstructured. Syntax highlighting brings out (highlights) the inherent structure of code. And that's kind of the entire point; it's there to show the structure. It may help you spot a typo, but that's not why it's there. That's an incidental perk. It's there because our brains are really good at pattern recognition, and having syntax follow a predictable color scheme taps in to that pattern recognition.
2. having keywords vs variable names vs functions be different colors helps you find misspellings, not the other way around. But that's almost beside the point, because it's your linter/intellisense/error checker's job to let you know when you have an obvious syntax error. You're also taking this as if you've just discovered this code block in the ether and have to debug it, rather that the reality that if you had actually been the author, you would have immediately noticed it, even without red squiggles, because it would be immediately obvious when you type it that it doesn't highlight as a keyword. Human brains are hardwired for pattern recognition, one could even argue it's the only thing the human brain is even good at.
3. I'm not sure where the notion of comments being grey is "tradition", but in practically every editor I've used, the default color for comments is a pretty easy to pick out green. Comments usually stick out like a sore thumb, in fact, as they typically don't share their color with any other syntax. Again, this points to you specifically picking out a non-default theme to make your points against.
4. "... gets so bad you can't see the base color" this isn't so much a thing, rather, the base color just isn't white. Which is because most people would agree that pure white on black is not pleasant to look at for long periods of time. There's a reason you don't see many dark mode highlighters use white. Again, default for vscode is a pleasant light blue. Plenty of contrast, but not so harsh it strains your eyes.
5. This is the most psychological, and subjective one, but plain, unhighlighted text just doesn't look like code. It looks like plaintext. Because plaintext is unstructured. Syntax highlighting brings out (highlights) the inherent structure of code. And that's kind of the entire point; it's there to show the structure. It may help you spot a typo, but that's not why it's there. That's an incidental perk. It's there because our brains are really good at pattern recognition, and having syntax follow a predictable color scheme taps in to that pattern recognition.