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Why are we still using Markdown?

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Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#11

Post by wisemanwillhear »

otterley wrote: post #3

Because, like UNIX/Linux itself, worse is better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better - and perfect is the enemy of "good enough." We want to encourage people to produce written output with minimal friction. Barriers to writing--and especially barriers to producing documentation--should be minimized. Writing well is difficult enough! Markup is overhead. Complex markup is even more overhead. Markdown is the…

The solution is sufficiently perfected with markdown. Just like new revolutionary technologies doesn't replace wheel technology.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#15

Post by sorrymate »

The article talks about how confusing Markdown can get. I understand, but HTML is *much* more confusing when it comes to creating technical articles. These days we are going to see more and more markdown with the advent of AI. Markdown works really we with AI because it reduces the number of tokens required for the same amount of information vs HTML.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#17

Post by stared »

Not many keystrokes to get a readable text. Yes, it has issues. But at its core, it is a plaintext with extra stuff, and no temptation to turn it into a webapp. (See my footnotes on HTML vs MD for saving text in https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2025/02/markdown-saves/).

Yes, there is a problem with "many ways to do the same thing". The solution is ease - use a linter or autoformatter. No more bikeshedding.

If you plan to use a clean yet expandable syntax, look at Typst. One of its core design principles (https://github.com/typst/typst?tab=readme-ov-file#design-pri...) is:

> Simplicity through Consistency: If you know how to do one thing in Typst, you should be able to transfer that knowledge to other things. If there are multiple ways to do the same thing, one of them should be at a different level of abstraction than the other. E.g. it's okay that = Introduction and #heading[Introduction] do the same thing because the former is just syntax sugar for the latter.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#18

Post by quelsolaar »

Mark down is great because it doesn't define a bunch of things. Headline? Its a headline, no font, no sizing, no colors... Just a headline. It means that it can be displayed on any device, printed on any paper, work with any accessibility tool and optimized for what ever requirements the reader has, not what ever the writer thought looked good. The web is full of great content being made hard to access because of poor/inflexible layout choices. Just give me the text and let me choose how to make it readable. The added fact that you can read raw markdown without even parsing it makes it even better. Not having total control over what its going to look like for the reader is a feature not a bug.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#19

Post by aerhardt »

causal wrote: post #7

These examples are contrived af. Nobody uses markdown like that bro. We like markdown because it's easy to read both rendered and raw.

Yea I’ve been typing encyclopedias worth of markdown, most to throw away, some to publish, and I’ve never had any the problems shown here.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#20

Post by mewpmewp2 »

sorrymate wrote: post #15

The article talks about how confusing Markdown can get. I understand, but HTML is *much* more confusing when it comes to creating technical articles. These days we are going to see more and more markdown with the advent of AI. Markdown works really we with AI because it reduces the number of tokens required for the same amount of information vs HTML.

Yes fully agreed, markdown is going to win by far just because of tokens and AI. The only thing I think right now that should be advanced, is plugins/custom components for markdown, like .mdx, etc token efficient ways of visualizing things in various ways, or custom interactive components, etc.
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