Related: my immediate thought was that this totally ignores basic aesthetics and readability. This is partly a matter of taste, but to say that the only virtue

Related: my immediate thought was that this totally ignores basic aesthetics and readability. This is partly a matter of taste, but to say that the only virtue of Markdown is popularity ignores why Markdown became so popular, when ReST, Textile, and others were varyingly widespread in all of Markdown's current niches before Markdown existed. Markdown was designed above all to be pleasant to write and read in the common case of relatively simple structure and markup, and it mostly succeeds. This is a huge advantage in practice.