How Markdown took over the world

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Why Markdown Won vs Alternatives

  • Several commenters recall contemporary contenders (Textile, reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, org-mode) and see Markdown’s victory as mostly timing, simplicity, and momentum—especially via blogs and later GitHub.
  • Compared to DocBook/Word, Markdown is seen as “worse is better”: far fewer features, but vastly better UX for basic writing, readable as source, and easy to adopt.
  • Markdown’s minimal core and the HTML-escape hatch made it practical: you use the simple bits 95% of the time and drop to HTML when needed.
  • Org-mode, rST, and AsciiDoc are praised as more powerful and cleaner, but too niche, heavy, or tied to specific ecosystems (e.g., Emacs, Sphinx).

Standardization, Flavors, and Parsing Pain

  • Many are frustrated that Markdown isn’t standardized; multiple “flavors” exist (GitHub, Slack/mrkdwn, GFM vs comments vs issues).
  • CommonMark is cited as an attempt to formalize ambiguous edge cases, but still complex and not universal.
  • Several note Markdown is deceptively hard to parse correctly (like YAML), with whitespace, newlines, and nested lists being especially tricky.
  • This non-uniformity is seen as both a feature (Postel-style robustness, adaptability) and a serious downside (portability, predictability).

Syntax, Semantics, and Limitations

  • Examples from the article itself (intra‑word underscores) are used to show ambiguity in emphasis rules; many prefer * over _.
  • Debates around <em>/<strong> vs <i>/<b> highlight Markdown’s reliance on HTML semantics and its lack of richer, explicit structure.
  • Limitations repeatedly mentioned: complex layouts, precise typography, semantic markup, math, multi-level lists that interact oddly with code blocks, and awkward tables.
  • Some argue Markdown is fine for notes and memos but inadequate for “real” structured documents; others counter that HTML inclusion and tools like Pandoc or Typst cover advanced needs.

Tools, Viewers, and Ecosystem

  • Widespread everyday support (GitHub, chats, Google Docs input, editors like Obsidian, Typora) is praised as a major adoption driver.
  • Others complain there are surprisingly few native “double-click and read” Markdown viewers, especially in stock OS/browser setups.
  • Alternatives like Typst and Djot are highlighted as more modern, structured takes, sometimes used as backends for Markdown-authored content.

Article Critiques & Historical Context

  • Some argue the article understates previous lightweight markup work and mischaracterizes how people actually wrote plain-text links.
  • The piece is also seen as too light on the contentious history around attempted standardization efforts and the resulting long-term fragmentation.