It helps a lot if you have syntax highlighting for markdown in your editor. I've written my share of bare HTML... I did it that for 10+ years somewhat infreque

It helps a lot if you have syntax highlighting for markdown in your editor. I've written my share of bare HTML... I did it that for 10+ years somewhat infrequently. I started a blog and used markdown and now I'm happy. HTML would have been worse for writing frequently IMO. It's annoying to type and annoying to read. One thing that is annoying is that hyperlinks tend to take up a really long line, more than 80 characters. You can't have a space after <a href=""> or before </a>, because that affects the appearance.