I come from the same position of not having heard of mermaid, but this document still worked for me; scrolling 500px I quickly and visually picked up a hint of

I come from the same position of not having heard of mermaid, but this document still worked for me; scrolling 500px I quickly and visually picked up a hint of what "mermaid" must be, and further scrolling let me visually drill down into nuances beyond "just" flowcharting. At that point I stopped skimming and started drilling into details and saw how "markdown-like" the syntax was. Overall as a sensory and communicative experience the document worked for me and the cognitive bandwidth was high.