Why are we still using Markdown? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#241

Post by duskdozer » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

eviks wrote: post #202

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disappearing asterisks is just terrible UX. It should turn bold but keep the asterisk displayed so you can still edit as normal. The bullet point problem is fixed by only bolding when the asterisks are on either end of word characters.

> It should turn bold but keep the asterisk displayed so you can still edit as normal. This is just terrible UI, why do you need garbage marks when you already have bold? And you can edit "as normal" if you like, but that only requires displaying asterisks during that tiny % of time you edit the word, not all the time when you read it or edit something else.

So you can still see the actual text that you're editing. And to reduce ambiguity. If you don't leave them, then you can't distinguish between adding more bold text to currently bold text or adding non-bold text immediately after

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#242

Post by nixpulvis » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

One of markdown's greatest assets is that it's basically plaintext. Can't render it to HTML, it's still very readable.

This blog post makes no sense to me.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#243

Post by eviks » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

duskdozer wrote: post #241

eviks wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should turn bold but keep the asterisk displayed so you can still edit as normal. This is just terrible UI, why do you need garbage marks when you already have bold? And you can edit "as normal" if you like, but that only requires displaying asterisks during that tiny % of time you edit the word, not all the time when you read it or edit something else.

So you can still see the actual text that you're editing. And to reduce ambiguity. If you don't leave them, then you can't distinguish between adding more bold text to currently bold text or adding non-bold text immediately after

> So you can still see the actual text that you're editing

But you're not editing that text! You're editing some other text and see a bunch of asterisks all over the place. And this is especially bad in nested styles - try some colored bold word in a table cell - without hiding the markup you'll basically lose most of visibility into the text/table layout

> to reduce ambiguity

it does the opposite, you can't easily distinguish between an asterisk and an asterisk, which is... ambiguity

> can't distinguish between adding more bold text to currently bold text or adding non-bold text immediately

Sure you can. In a well-designed editor you'll see the style indicator right near your caret is so it's always obvious whether and how your typed text is styled or not.

In a not-so-well-designed editor you'll get that indicator far away from your caret or just get asterisks appearing when you need them.

In a not-designed editor you'll see them all the time even when they don't serve any purpose.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#244

Post by jrm4 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

Because, and I cannot stress this enough:

Programming languages (and the like) are for humans, not for computers or for creating formal systems.

Understanding this simple fact will save you (and by you I mean me and the type of people who frequent sites like this) a ton of headache.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#245

Post by devmor » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #80

singpolyma3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stepped right on the rake though because it uses sigils which were common, but requires they be used in uncommon ways (by doubling etc) which it why most chat UIs don't actually use markdown

Somehow basically only Discord gets it almost perfectly right though.

Which is very recent. Discord only added full markdown support a couple years ago.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#246

Post by tmalsburg2 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #52

nostrademons wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth remembering that markdown tried very hard to encode conventions that were already used in Usenet, email, and other text media. A > to indicate a quote was widespread Usenet convention. Asterisks or underscores to indicate emphasis was also a common convention; both are legal because both were common. Double asterisk or double underscores to indicate really, really emphasizing something was also a comm…

markdown tried very hard to encode conventions that were already used in Usenet, email, and other text media For those of you who weren't there: *bold* _underline_ ~strikethrough~ /italics/ > Quotation - list - list - list I've been using these for almost half a century. They're much easier and more intuitive than Markdown. I see no compelling reason to change.

Org-mode FTW

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#247

Post by politician » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

Mordisquitos wrote: post #236

mcv wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, * asterisks * for italic has always felt wrong to me. I can understand underscores if slashes cause confusion with file paths. *bold* and _italic_ would have been better.

I agree that using *asterisks* just feels wrong for italics, and are much better suited for bold. However, surely the _underscore_ is just perfect to visually indicate underlining? As for /slashes/, which would visually be perfect for italics, the only reason they conflict between italics and filepaths is the fact that in both cases they are expected to be used at the beginning and end of a word. Maybe using an unnat…

_underscore_ for italics conflicts with most identifiers in most languages.

Markdown was created in an era before the web had easily used components for structural syntax highlighting (tree-sitter) and where reliance on regex-based approaches was more common.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#248

Post by pclowes » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

Ferret7446 wrote: post #131

pclowes wrote: post #123

We use markdown because LLMs are great at it. Markdown in the same directory as the code it documents is very readable by humans and LLMs. Given LLMs proficiency in markdown and that reading it in view and edit mode is comparable I bet many engineering teams ditch confluence/Google docs for documentation in favor of just markdown plaintext docs adjacent to code (my team has moved design/RFCs to this as well, get feed…

LLMs are great at it because it was already a widely adopted standard and fed to LLMs in training sets

Exactly, I am very bearish about the prospects of any new languages post-LLM era gaining traction. Unless they are highly specialized or somehow better for LLMs.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#249

Post by kaycebasques » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

> These 2 produce IDENTICAL output.

This is my single biggest complaint about reStructuredText. You create headings by putting underlines and (optional!) overlines around the section heading text. But all of the following are valid title adornment characters:

  ! " # $ % & ' ( ) \* + 
  , - . / : ;  ? @ 
  [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~

So in each doc you have to figure out the H1, H2, H3 formatting separately. E.g. in one doc it's:

  ==
  H1
  ==

  Normal text

  --
  H2
  --

Whereas in another it might be:

  H1
  ~~

  Normal text

  !!
  H2
  !!

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#250

Post by grumbel » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

singpolyma3 wrote: post #67

zimpenfish wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. God, remember when that was that goal of HTML and the web? What a beautiful couple of years that was.

IMHO still is. Just don't add any JS or CSS

Problem with that is that the default browser styling is extremely ugly and the ability for custom style sheets was removed from the browser GUI many years ago. ReaderMode and Addons can help, but as long as the default is essentially broken and unsupported that whole approach remains a dead end.

On top of that come issues like the lack of pagination support in browsers, which make long document impossible to read and practically require to add custom UI inside the website itself.

ePub works much better, with readers giving control over line spacing, font size, pagination and proper markup for TOC and other metadata, but despite ePub being based on xHTML, browsers have ignored it (only old Edge supported it for a little while).