alt Hacker NewsFor me, Markdown produces a lot of unnecessary cognitive load compared to other markup languages.
• I have to decide whether to use asterisks or underscores for bold and italic.
• I have to decide whether to use asterisks, hyphen-minuses, or plus signs for unordered lists.
• I have to remember all the various rules and edge cases about parsing.
Replies
nxpnsv • yesterday at 6:38 PM
1&2 just pick one, it doesn’t matter. 3 mostly you’re the parser… if you’re after accuracy there are better versions, but it sure is simple to read and write
chrisweekly • yesterday at 6:34 PM
I suggest trying Obsidian for WYSIWYG markdown editing. It beats heck out of typing it raw and eliminates that cognitive load.
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> compared to other markup languages
I think it would be easier for me to appreciate your comment if you named some of these other languages. Markdown is the only standardized one I regularly come across that I type by hand, these days.
What are you contrasting to?
As for Markdown specifically- the only thing I regularly mix up is the syntax for links. I frequently reverse the [] and (). But that's just because I don't use it enough to have the muscle memory.