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Comment by sudojudo | Hacker News Reader

Please explain why it's markdown. Is Reddit's link format not just BBCode [0]? Honest question, no snark.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode

No, BBCode looks like:

    [url=https://example.com]link text[/url]

whereas Markdown looks like:

    [link text](https://example.com)

Compare the BBCode article you linked to the Markdown article [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example

Thanks. Have to admit, I'm still confused, especially after reading the first sentence on that page...

>Markdown is a lightweight markup language

Clearly in over my head on this, I'm just going to stop using the term altogether.

Both BBCode and Markdown are markup languages. ("Markdown" is a play on "markup language".)

BBCode was used on old internet message boards. You'd write something like [b]text[/b] to get bolded text, [i]text[/i] for italics, [img] to embed images, etc. BBCode tags (like [b]) mirrored simple HTML tags usually: since message board posters weren't really trusted, allowing regular HTML was out of the question.

Markdown is a newer markup language that was intended to be easier to read and write. Instead of [i]text[/i], you write

    *text*

which is actually one of the few formatting options HN recognizes [0]: text. Bold is double stars, links are this [link text](url) format, images are ![url](alt text), etc.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Cheers for this. I'm old and that's why I thought it was BBCode. Markup is such a loose term that I couldn't figure out what the problem was. You've put it to rest now though, I get it, whew.

Learned something new, pedantry FTW!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com