Yup, that's what I eventually did, however I don't understand why that is not the default behaviour of <code> in Drupal. And why <pre> is not part of the default input format list.

For most purposes that seems to be useful (if <code> is not doing what one should expect).

Same problem when your content is being used in RSS feeds, the <code> blocks are not represented correctly. I guess I have different expectations...