alt Hacker NewsWhy are we still using Markdown?
Comments
Because there's only one reasonable implementation of AsciiDoc
I think the author is missing the point. Markdown is easy for humans to read, write, and modify. Yes, parsers can be complicated. Few people need to write parsers, so that's ok, if unfortunate for those parser authors. Orders of magnitude more people need to read, write, and modify the documents themselves, and the fact that it's easy to do so is a huge strength.
HTML is terrible when you consider these properties. It's not easy to read, and is annoying to write and modify. Ditto for any other XML-based markup language, or even something like RST. LaTeX is right out.
Ultimately the author seems to suggest plain text should be what people use? That misses the point. Plain text is great for a lot of things, but if you're going to generate HTML (or something else) from it, you need something that at least has some structure. Markdown hits a nice sweet spot where it has enough structure such that you can reasonably generate rich-text document formats from it, but not so much that non-technical users can't work their heads around the format.
This website, at least in dark mode, doesn't have any visible indication when text is selected.
... Which is additionally frustrating, since the links at the bottom aren't actually links (so you have to select them to copy and paste into your address bar)
> These 2 produce IDENTICAL output.
...and? What a weird article. Of course two different pieces source code can produce identical output. Every single mainstream languages are like that too.
These examples are contrived af.
Nobody uses markdown like that bro. We like markdown because it's easy to read both rendered and raw.
Hard, hard no on this.
Why are we using Markdown? Why do I use it every day?
It's easy to write. It's easy to read. Despite the OP's complaints, quality parsers exist.
pandoc can turn it into almost any format. We will still be writing markdown in 50 years, because the design bridges a bunch of compromises very nicely.
I actually do agree that HTML is a better one, if it is a bit easier to read the source...I want text, image and links in one place and HTML is indeed the easiest one.
BTW TempleOS terminal comes into mind. I really love the hyperlinks.
When I read articles like this my reaction is always “put up or shut up.”
If you have a better idea, make it happen.
The author merely described the parameters of a solution and didn’t even attempt to solve it.
In essence, we aren’t even left certain that a better solution that satisfies all stakeholders is possible.
You communicate on hacker news through plain text. You don't need to control the user don't, color, and what ads they see.
If what is to communicate, plain text is good enough. If you want to control how information is consumed, fuck of, die already.
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Markdown has a lot of weird choices and works best for longer documents.
Check out my "Advent of Markdown" where I go through surprising markdown behavior: https://mastodon.social/@timokoesters/115643467322561173
I'm not using Markdown; I'm using plain text, along with a handful of well-understood formatting conventions which go back decades. "Markdown" is just a prettier means of displaying such text.
HTML is not a markup language anymore; it has become a lunatic application platform, and the last thing I want when trying to read some text is the intrusion of some lunatic's application.
Because Markdown is awesome, easier to write, and easier to read at the source level.