The Glory of Markdown
October 18, 2015
1. Markdown brings us back to our roots
Html is the language of the web. It unifies the view by which everyone consumes content.
But let’s face it: HTML is not fun to write manually. Neither is CSS. And I don’t even want to think about what it would be like to write all of a webpage using pure Javascript.
So how do we create content for the web without writing HTML? With a text editor.
Yes. That’s right. A text editor. Open up your notepad.exe, vi, vim, emacs, or gedit. Whatever suits your fancy. No add-ons, no plugins, no bullshit. Markdown is simple to write and easy to learn.
2. Markdown is simple
Markdown’s syntax is simple. Deceivingly simple. It’s so intuitive that you wonder: “why didn’t I think of that?”
There’s no special characters here. Everything can be found right on your keyboard so you don’t even need a mouse. Some might even go as far as to say that markdown is designed for command-line editors.
You never even have to pick your fingers up off the keyboard. That’s why it’s so simple. No fiddle, no fuss.
3. Markdown is beautiful
Yeah so your webpage might look cool with all those colors and fancy CSS3-box shadows, borders, and transitions, but when you write those webpages, can you tell exactly what it’s going to look like by taking a quick glance at your HTML file?
(Hint: the answer is no)
Markdown itself is a beautiful and simple syntax. It’s pretty easy to tell how a page is going to look after it’s converted to HTML.
We get no frills and no fancy, but we don’t really need that anyways. Markdown is deceivingly simple to write, and has many features that makes its syntax powerful.
4. Markdown lets you worry about your content
Markdown allows you to get stuff done. I guarantee that anyone who writes documents in markdown is far more productive than someone who writes in a full fledged editor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
Instead of messing around with the fancy-shmancy fonts, page layouts, headers, names, text-size, and the million other attributes, Markdown let’s you focus on what’s important. The content.
A quick glance at your markdown document and you already know how it will look. No more worries.
5. Markdown is portable
Markdown. It’s small. It’s tidy. The same size as a text document. Extremely portable. You can open and edit files on any computer. No extra installs. No different formats. It’s the same everywhere.
Not to mention because markdown is made to be formatted for the web, when exported to HTML, we can put it anywhere. Copy-and-paste into a Word document, save as a PDF, or just read as HTML. It let’s you put your content anywhere in many different formats.