[0xbadcafebee]

Everyone else in the world - and I mean everyone - who is not a software engineer - does not use Markdown.

There is a reason for that. And it's not because they're all stupid and software engineers are all geniuses.

It's because normal people do not want to spend their day wasted in minutia, carving out huge chunks of technical jargon, just to get some words on a page to show up with a certain layout and format.

They want to highlight some text, and click the Bold button, or maybe Ctrl+B, and see the text become bold. They don't want to write code. They want to just make a fucking document, so they can get on with their day.

We have had programs that do this for about 40+ years now. They are called word processors and presentation tools. They work very well, and require absolutely zero code or weird characters.

But software engineers are so insanely out of touch, so cluelessly locked into their web browsers, that they literally cannot imagine a universe in which a person isn't writing code to get some text to show up on a screen, formatted and laid out.

It literally feels like everyone in this industry is insane.

[lmm]

> It's because normal people do not want to spend their day wasted in minutia, carving out huge chunks of technical jargon, just to get some words on a page to show up with a certain layout and format.

> They want to highlight some text, and click the Bold button, or maybe Ctrl+B, and see the text become bold.

They do not. No normal person has ever said how happy they were that they could highlight text and click a button, and certainly not that they typed Ctrl+B. Normal people do not type Ctrl+anything.

Normal people don't type text at all, but if you find the most normie internet forum you can think of - one where people talk about car parts or who the Khardasians are dating or something - you'll find it has some kind of text markup format, and the most prolific users of that forum use the markup format rather than the WYSIWTF editor that craps up their formatting too much. And if you ever find a topic with two competing norie fora, you'll find the people on the one whose text markup format is more markdown-like will be happier than the people on the one whose text markup format is less markdown-like.

[fragmede]

forum? Instagram is the mainstream product you're looking for, and the text rendering there is decidedly GUI based and not markdown-esque

[lmm]

Instagram does not offer "highlight some text, and click the Bold button, or maybe Ctrl+B". The normal way to put bold text on Instagram is to use an online "bold text generator" and copy-paste from there. I struggle to imagine that it's that way because people like doing that.

From a quick search only "mainstream social media" which offers native bold functionality is WhatsApp. And it uses markdown-style.

[usr1106]

Everyone and that even includes many software developers uses unprofessional tools. Wysiwyg and pressing buttons are easier when you start. Text-only sources and mark up (like Markdown...) are more powerful when requirements grow.

Just as an example: We use Google's office suite in our company because there are some users who believe it is more user-friendly than storing text and a proper version control. For version control Google offers named versions. Last week some Google sheet reached its 16th version. Well, would have reached, if Google did not limit the number of named versions to 15. You cannot run a business with serious audit trail requirements using so-called user-friendly "everyone uses" tools. Everyone has horrible standards and inappropriate IT continues to lower them. It's a fact, but not a fact anyone should praise.

[scblock]

Hi. I'm not a software engineer. I write a lot, and I use Markdown for most of it, including in professional context as a team manager. Even for things as simple as call notes (just a bullet list, but that's THE POINT).

This is a really stupid take.

[rr808]

I think this is because normal people dont use git and/or console text editors. Its a powerful combination that makes markdown useful.

[herpdyderp]

> They want to just make a fucking document, so they can get on with their day.

This is exactly why I ditched WYSIWYG long before I knew how to code.