I find this article to be sort of ridiculous. Sure, some of the critiques about the various flavors of Markdown might be valid (but I would posit that for the non-technical users the author claims to be so concerned about, the chances of them regularly having to interact with more than one flavor (and no, Slack and Reddit don’t count), is extremely low), but the whole piece seems to be an advertisement for the author's company's JSON-based rich text specification, which couldn’t be further away from the point of Markdown if it tried.

Markdown is for writers. The fact that it has been adapted and forked and flavored into something that many developers like is wonderful. But it is fundamentally for writers. And I’ve taught dozens, if not hundredS, of “normies” to use Markdown when writing for the web over the last 15 years. Some of them have hated it — which is totally fine - but many more have appreciated being able to write readable content for the web without having to do it in the CMS, which is always, always, always, a flat-out terrible idea. Or the other alternative, which is write in Google Docs or Word or Notion or whatever and then paste it into the CMS for the hell that will ensue.

There is a certain irony in the author claiming to want to make a better authoring system for users, but only in a way that adds complexity, requires developers to build UIs around its spec, and has benefits that really only appeal to the people building the CMS or trying to sell people on why their version of TinyMCE is best (oh, but you have to build the TinyMCE UI yourself…this is just another overly-complicated JSON spec that really is provably only suited by whatever it is Sanity is trying to hawk).

Markdown isn’t perfect. And it doesn’t claim to be. But in terms of being a readable and easily usable way to write content for the web, it’s pretty damn great.