[enriquto]

Thanks to optional closing tags, html5 tables are quite neat:

  <table>
    <tr>
      <td>first row, first column
      <td>first row, second column
      <td>first row, third column
    <tr>
      <td>second row, first column
      <td>second row, second column
      <td>second row, third column
  </table>

Does it get any better in markdown?

[subtra3t]

I'll convert your example to GFM.

  | first row, first column  | first row, second column  | first row, third column  |
  | ------------------------ | ------------------------- | ------------------------ |
  | second row, first column | second row, second column | second row, third column |

To me, this is more readable than the HTML version.

[kotborealis]

It's not fun to manually reformat those tables for readability. If I add something to the `second row, second column`, I have to add extra spaces to the `first row, second column`, or it will look janky.

  | first row, first column  | first row, second column  | first row, third column  |
  | ------------------------ | ------------------------- | ------------------------ |
  | second row, first column | exceptionally long second row, that makes second column look worse | second row, third column |

[eviks]

The fact that you need to list columns in rows already makes it NOT a table

[bluGill]

Both are diffult to read and work with.

[eviks]

both are difficult to work with since it's not the job of a data format, but table editing tooling on top of that, but the markdown tables that look like tables aren't difficult to read unlike HTML