While other markup languages like BBCode, Textile, AsciiDoc, and ReStructuredText already existed, Markdown caught on and was adopted by sites like GitHub, Reddit and StackOverflow for formatting content. This contrasted with writing in straight HTML which has a tag-based markup that can be verbose and make readability difficult, especially if you are unfamiliar with the meanings of each tag. The idea was that Markdown would not only be easy to write, with a relatively limited and simple syntax, but more importantly it would be easy to read. A tool (originally written in Perl) to convert this markup into valid HTML.A syntax for marking up plain text documents.He created the syntax in collaboration with Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit. Markdown was originally released in 2004 by John Gruber who was already very well known for his Apple-focused blog.

In this post, I hope to offer some background on what Markdown is and the role it typically plays in the Jamstack. If you're unfamilar with Markdown but find yourself writing or editing content for Jamstack sites, you may be wondering what all this weird formatting is all about. The primary means of authoring content for the average non-developer is still Word or a tool with a similar authoring experience (ex. However, once you move out of developer circles, it becomes much less common that anyone has ever heard of it, much less used it. Markdown has become so ubiquitous to developers that it is often taken for granted and assumed that just about anyone creating content is familiar with it.

What is macdown