My first exposure to Markdown was via John Gruber’s project circa 2004. This was a project that always interested me from early on in its existence. It has been quite intriguing watching how it has intertwined itself into current software development.

Sites like Microsoft, GitHub, Reddit, StackExchange, etc thrive and increase usability through adoption of this standard. Personally, I find it to be a great lightweight syntax for note taking, test case scenarios, log writing, and project notes; to name a few. It is a format that I use daily and greatly benefit from!

Note is this written in Markdown on Github Pages

Simple Markdown Walk-Through

# This is H1

## This is H2

### This is H3

* Bulleted List Item 1
* Bulleted List Item 2
    * Bulleted List Sub Item 1

> Blockquote time!

**Bold Emphasize**

*Italic Emphasize*

[LINK](https://www.google.com)

This is H1

This is H2

This is H3

  • Bulleted List Item 1
  • Bulleted List Item 2
    • Bulleted List Sub Item 1

Blockquote time!

Bold Emphasize

Italic Emphasize

LINK

These are some simple examples, but there a number of great Markdown resources available.

Markdown Resources

Evolutionary Not Revolutionary

This doesn’t seem ground-breaking or revolutionary, but I think it is very important. Having worked for organizations that have consolidated around large Word documents. What happens is that depending on the year of the documentation creation; that is how the formatting will be forever. These documents get stuck in time, at least formatting-wise, until someone updates them. My favorite implementation of Markdown is Microsoft Docs. Microsoft Docs links to Microsoft Docs Github. The documentation are shared with the public and then “complied” into the public website; It’s really cool!

Challenges Ahead

There are still a number of challenges facing Markdown going forward. There are a number of flavors and usage restrictions that the sites previously mention use. I feel at the core they are all quite compatible except for additions and omissions by the providers. This is something to keep note of when switching between them.