As somebody who only makes a pretty basic use of org-mode I disagree. Without having to read anything you just have to remember to use * to mark sections and *

As somebody who only makes a pretty basic use of org-mode I disagree. Without having to read anything you just have to remember to use * to mark sections and * * for subsections and so on. Then you use tab to expand/collapse the sections. That's rather intuitive, not more complicated than a plain text file and already you have better highlighting and additional functionality. Then sometimes I wonder "hey, I'd like to have a link to this URL in this file" or "I'd like to export this to HTML or PDF so that I can send it to my friend who doesn't use org-mode without losing the formatting". And then you look in the manual and you (generally) find what you're looking for. Sure if you want to be an org-mode wizard you'll have to learn quite a bit but I really don't see "the complexity penalty vs. using a plain text file". The complexity is only here if you want it. Edit: also the array auto-formatting is a godsend. Doing it by hand in text files is tedious.