> there are no formatting operations you have to learn I see it as the opposite. If you give a 2 panel markdown editor to any non-developer human they will be

> there are no formatting operations you have to learn I see it as the opposite. If you give a 2 panel markdown editor to any non-developer human they will be baffled at how to do any formatting with it. Rich text editors are intuitive, that's why they've dominated computing for the last 30-40 years. > you can't easily predict what will happen simply by looking at the screen Huh? In rich text you see what everybody else will see. In 2-panel markdown you need the second panel to see how your final text will look to the rest of the world because you can't predict that easily when writing in an esoteric markup. > For this huge advantage in predictability and simplicity, Markdown sacrifices formatting power I wouldn't call requiring a second panel to preview how the actual text will look predictable or simple. It's a rube goldberg machine. On the other hand, I think the best thing about markdown is the restrictions to formatting. It forces you to write in semantic HTML. IMO, Notion, for all its sluggishness, nails this part. They provide the intuitiveness of a rich text editor, while restricting the amount of styling to a markdown-esque set of properties so what you write will be easily portable to the web.