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Markdown is a terrible language.

107,358 views • 6 months ago •via X (Twitter)

33 Comments

HSVSphere's profile picture
HSVSphere6 months ago

[![alt text][img link]](real link) this works btw, you don't need to do <img

gingerBill's profile picture
gingerBill6 months ago

Markdown is fine for many things. But the complaint here is more to do with people trying to use Markdown as a generalized markup language rather than how it is meant to be a very very specific thing (e.g. blogs and forums).

htmx.org / CEO of Big Pickle (same thing)'s profile picture
htmx.org / CEO of Big Pickle (same thing)6 months ago

please, allow me:

CHIHEB Nabil's profile picture
CHIHEB Nabil6 months ago

Markdown is terrible he said… while literally every dev tool, GitHub, Obsidian, and AI prompt on earth runs on it.

HSVSphere's profile picture
HSVSphere6 months ago

Eh, I kind of agree, but rather than creating a new language entirely you can disable *italic* and __bold__ support, and force everything to be Header\n=== instead. I know you won't do the latter though Also for footnotes, I turn every [^N] in my blog into one unconditionally. Also can do [^this is the footnote text] rather than a real footnote defined. It's not that bad, inline HTML is fine. Get a good parser, it's not hard to make one either

Saurav Chaudhary's profile picture
Saurav Chaudhary6 months ago

Markdown isn’t loved because it’s technically great. It won because it’s fast, readable, and everywhere. Many bad tools dominate because they solve the right problem simply.

Seba Lopez 💻's profile picture
Seba Lopez 💻6 months ago

Agree, I already talked about it in this article

Shannon Sands's profile picture
Shannon Sands6 months ago

I hated it at first, now I have accepted it. worse is sometimes better

webXOS's profile picture
webXOS6 months ago

Markdown is a language from the future, you will understand one day

Vishnu's profile picture
Vishnu6 months ago

Markdown had won because it was good enough where it was. Isn't it obvious that AI can easily handle these languages like at pro level whenever anyone needs to wrap their head to get things done?

Andrei Apanasik (🐱, 🔪,геймдев и игры)'s profile picture
Andrei Apanasik (🐱, 🔪,геймдев и игры)6 months ago

Agreed. We need to switch to yml.

Max Bo 🔰's profile picture
Max Bo 🔰6 months ago

thoughts on Typst Theo? Seems like a markup language born out of frustration of Markdown and LaTeX with proper scripting, math support, build system and package ecosystem

Bgs's profile picture
Bgs6 months ago

Thank you @theo for featuring my article on markdown! I saw your post via a friend and knew I had to open an account post haste. Thank you for not burning my article down! If anybody has any questions I'm here.

Sakil Sazzad Joy's profile picture
Sakil Sazzad Joy6 months ago

bro's hate for obsidian is absurd

simeonGriggs's profile picture
simeonGriggs6 months ago

@kmelve you seeing this

Daniel Dollinger's profile picture
Daniel Dollinger6 months ago

Yes… huge fan of using it ONLY for basic text, headings, lists, and the occasional table. My own perspective is that speed and simplicity should be prioritized, with the focus on quality content. If my intention is to format, I move the content to a proper presentation application like Word.

Darek Gusto's profile picture
Darek Gusto6 months ago

Aren't we all markdown developers now?

Daniel Rachlin's profile picture
Daniel Rachlin6 months ago

Not pretty, but it gets the job done for docs and notes.

Jesse Riddle's profile picture
Jesse Riddle6 months ago

Markdown is fine for simple formatting for simple documentation. If more advanced formatting is needed, there are tools for that too. Back in my day, we'd say Google it.

Jethro Rose's profile picture
Jethro Rose6 months ago

So is English but here we are

Pavel Buchta's profile picture
Pavel Buchta6 months ago

I like theo, because he has actual hot takes. (And his hot takes are pretty f*cking hot)

puffybsd's profile picture
puffybsd6 months ago

asciidoc but better tooling

sleepy mexican's profile picture
sleepy mexican6 months ago

I'd cut my balls before i had to write LaTeX at work, THeo

ZVIX's profile picture
ZVIX6 months ago

amen, i agree

Osamah Aldoaiss's profile picture
Osamah Aldoaiss6 months ago

I think I agree with most points here. Markdown has been unfortunately abused into something it is not supposed to be. The question is, is there a way back from that?

joel ⛈️'s profile picture
joel ⛈️6 months ago

is this true @kmelve

Alex Younger's profile picture
Alex Younger6 months ago

Markdown is perfect. Everything should be in Markdown

adyingdeath's profile picture
adyingdeath6 months ago

And markdown has become an even bigger thing after LLMs came.

Hershal Rao's profile picture
Hershal Rao6 months ago

it’s just regex with a better marketing team

Solomon Bush's profile picture
Solomon Bush6 months ago

Yeah totally - we should go back to XML

Didier Demoniere 🐈‍⬛'s profile picture
Didier Demoniere 🐈‍⬛6 months ago

Mostly agree, but imo the point of mdx in an llm context is not so much the md part but the x. Even with plain text using components allow leveraging frontend patterns for prompting (props, context providers, etc…). I might be tripping, but, i think that’s powerful.

AyuX's profile picture
AyuX6 months ago

New video

Sup*'s profile picture
Sup*6 months ago

Hooked! What a title!

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