Change my mind.
I write plain text. I just happen to format it like markdown.
Markdown…is…plaintext, though?
yup but with more tricks
Markdown is text that can kick flip
Every programming language is plain text.
Not intended to be easily human-readable though.
Sure they are. They’re intended to be as easy to read for a human as possible.
No. The primary purpose of programming languages is to be machine-readable first, human-readable second. The primary purpose of both markdown and plaintext is to be equally readable by both humans and machines.
Assembly, perhaps. But not every other language. Every other language’s sole purpose is to be easier than assembly to read by humans, so it can be compiled or translated through an engine into something a machine can read.
Machines do not read Rust. Machines do not read C++. Machines do not read JavaScript. Humans do.
Machines do read Rust. Just because those machines are compiling the Rust code doesn’t mean they aren’t reading it. And every affordance the Rust devs included to make it easier for that compiler to do its job makes it harder for humans to read, but Markdown’s affordances are equally helpful for humans as for computers; and they’re designed to be so because they were adapted from shorthand that was already in use.
Debate all you want, but the literal first sentence on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language
A programming language is an engineered language for expressing computer programs,[1] typically allowing software to be written in a human readable manner.
Markdown would be better if everyone using it used the same markdown. I swear no two places use it the same.
true though
LaTeX has entered the chat
kick him out.
I do like me some htmx
A quality text file is a bit of a lost art these days. I like looking through this archive of old text files from the 80s and 90s once in a while. http://textfiles.com/directory.html
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