HTML may be easier for you (it certainly is for me), but that's because you are a programmer. You must keep in mind that Markdown targets a very wide audience:

HTML may be easier for you (it certainly is for me), but that's because you are a programmer. You must keep in mind that Markdown targets a very wide audience: you cannot expect your average Reddit user to write emphasis tags every time he wants to say something sarcastic in a comment, and trust me, that's pretty often. Likewise, you cannot expect the average Joe to remember the syntax of an HTML link tag when writing a comment in your website, but you do need (at least we do) to make sure that the links in your website have certain attributes (rel, target, etc): Hence, customizable Markdown.