The main advantage to using SHA256 as a method to send address is that it is way smaller than public keys and hence more convenient to store and type.
I see, thanks for the reply. It turns out that this size reduction of the original input is another useful property of the hashing function.
Since your public key isn't exposed till you spend your coins, your address would likely be safe against it.
So, does this imply that the first time one decides to spend some coins (and expose their public key) their private key is potentially less safe?
It is answered by someone with a nick "theymos", this sounds familiar, not sure why...
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I should've done better job researching this subject. It appears that my question has been answered a long time ago!