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How Markdown took over the world

anildash.com

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Re: How Markdown took over the world

#81

Post by anildash »

Analemma_ wrote: post #65

This is a good article, although I wish it had talked a little more about the standardization (or rather, the lack thereof) in Markdown. I get why it didn't, it's trying to be positive about something that is an overwhelming net positive for the world, but I think a "warts-and-all" treatment of the history would be more honest. I appreciate that Gruber brought this very helpful thing into the world, but OTOH he was s…

I _don't_ think it was just ego. I think it was a smart strategy because formal standardization tends to bring in complexity, and just letting folks go off on their own and document their own usage (or "flavors") ends up being Good Enough in actual practice. It sucks from a standpoint of what I personally find satisfying, to be clear. But based on what I've seen over the last 20+ years, it is the strategy that is much less likely to yield a format that gets captured by giant companies that own a hyper-corporate standardization process that eventually gets enshittified.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#82

Post by ggm »

duskwuff wrote: post #73
NelsonMinar wrote: post #52

I think it's a littly funny he characterizes "Had the right flavor for every different context" as an advantage. It drives me crazy that Markdown is not the same everywhere and I'm still regularly getting confused about *bold* or **bold** or *italics*. (Curse you, Slack's weirdo version.) I respect Anil's argument that the extensibility has helped it be adapted to different contexts, and in practice the looseness of…

In the contexts where Markdown is most often used, the distinction between bold and italics isn't really important. So long as *this* or **this** gets rendered in a way that conveys emphasis , the meaning is preserved.

The implicit humour of using 3 forms of intent, only one of which works in HN

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#83

Post by kazinator »

eikenberry wrote: post #71
kazinator wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java isn't worse than C++; it has a much more capable run-time, something which is left as an implementation-defined footnote in C++. Java had a leg-up over C++ by several decades in having a concurrency story (at all) in the language. I wouldn't use std:: anything for threads even in a greenfield C++ project today. Garbage collection is more advanced than the primitive management tools available in C++, like smart p…

> Java isn't worse than C++; "Worse is better" is about simplicity vs expressibility tradeoffs, not an absolute better/worse value judgement. By saying Java is worse than C++ here the OP is only saying that Java is simpler (less expressible) than C++.

Nope; worse is better is about simplicity versus correctness tradeoffs. I've read the P. Gabriel essay enough times that I can rely on my memory of it.

Like whether to hide interrupted system calls, or punt the responsibility for restarting them to the application. (That "PC loser-ing problem" example used in the essay).

Between C++ and Java, it is hard call, but I would say that the Java ecosystem values correctness more than C++.

I don't mean valuing the correctness of a delivered application, but valuing the contribution of the language stack to that goal.

Java manages memory, and defines the order of evaluation of operands in an expression. Need we go on? Java also has a security story for loading compiled code. There is no sandbox model of any kind in C++.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#84

Post by astrange »

wiseowise wrote: post #46
w10-1 wrote: post #6

This is good and detailed, but misses a broader trend: how "worse is better" started to win - first Java over C++, then python and javascript over Java, and here markdown over Word and docbook. When markdown emerged, docbook was getting even more elaborate, and vendors everywhere had for decades been locking people into frameworks and languages with fantastic features that were hard to use -- and then the internet bu…

> how "worse is better" started to win > first Java over C++ ...really? Java was literally created to fix C++ issues. > then python and javascript over Java That's just different, not worse.

Java is based on Objective-C/Smalltalk, not on C++. It's strictly worse than its original too. There's a lot to be said for the rule of least power, but it's not nearly powerful enough.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#86

Post by qingcharles »

sheept wrote: post #69
Johnny_Bonk wrote: post #62

I'm fairly new to all this, but my understanding is that Markdown is great for a few reasons: It's just plain text, so no vendor lock-in and you can ripgrep/fzf/grep through it Lives happily in git repos with proper diffs LLMs speak it natively - they output Markdown, they understand Markdown input Way easier for agents to parse than PDFs (which are binary, layout-focused, tables turn to mush) Can do tables (at least…

(CommonMark) Markdown is a rough superset of HTML, like how YAML is a superset of JSON. So whatever can be expressed in HTML can also be expressed in Markdown. With the way the CommonMark spec is written, Markdown is effectively just an HTML preprocessor. A major limitation of Markdown is the lack of standardization. For example, even within GFM there's multiple subtle variants: a single new line becomes a space when…

It's enormously frustrating that there has been no standardization of the core base-level Markdown elements.

If you allow Markdown input you have to give a cheatsheet showing which "flavor" you are using.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#87

Post by VerifiedReports »

Havoc wrote: post #56

Sound write-up. It is missing the #1 reason I like it though - it's fundamentally text. No format/vendor lock-in and very amenable to living in a git repo. For my note taking that's already game over right there against everything else. I don't want to worry about whatever cursed format OneNote uses is still something I can extract in 2035. I also like that it's become a defacto standard that LLMs speak. I can tell i…

Except there's a massive lack of Markdown VIEWERS. You find MD files in every open-source project and lots of other places, but almost no viewers that render them as intended. So you wind up looking at them as plain text, with a bunch of formatting characters in them. What's the point, then?

Only just now has Windows Notepad been revised to render Markdown (I think it does now, anyway). And after searching for a Mac one I finally bought Marked. But that's all I could find. Otherwise you have to load MD files in some kind of editor and "preview" them. NO! I just want to double-click on the file and READ it, with the formatting applied. Why is that so hard?

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#88

Post by VerifiedReports »

Johnny_Bonk wrote: post #62

I'm fairly new to all this, but my understanding is that Markdown is great for a few reasons: It's just plain text, so no vendor lock-in and you can ripgrep/fzf/grep through it Lives happily in git repos with proper diffs LLMs speak it natively - they output Markdown, they understand Markdown input Way easier for agents to parse than PDFs (which are binary, layout-focused, tables turn to mush) Can do tables (at least…

The lack of viewers for it.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#89

Post by VerifiedReports »

rkp8000 wrote: post #57

I love Markdown. I'm a bit surprised, though, that you still can't open a .md file by default in most web browsers. It seems like it should be quite trivial to have the browser automatically convert it to html and display it.

As I was griping above, you usually can't just view a Markdown file with formatting applied at all. I think MAYBE Notepad has been updated just recently to render it, but otherwise... you're looking at plain text with a bunch of formatting characters in it. Why? It's baffling. Where are the simple Markdown READERS?

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#90

Post by mlok »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #52

I think it's a littly funny he characterizes "Had the right flavor for every different context" as an advantage. It drives me crazy that Markdown is not the same everywhere and I'm still regularly getting confused about *bold* or **bold** or *italics*. (Curse you, Slack's weirdo version.) I respect Anil's argument that the extensibility has helped it be adapted to different contexts, and in practice the looseness of…

A more intuitive norm, used in other formats, would have been :

*bold*

/italics/

_underline_

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