[bazoom42]

Why did markdown become popular when we already have html? Because markdown is much easier to write by hand in a simple text editor.

Original SGML was actually closer to markdown. It had various options to shorten and simplify the syntax, making it easy to write and edit by hand, while still having an unambiguous structure.

The verbose and explicit structure of xhtml makes it easier to process by tools, but more tedious for humans.

[nathankleyn]

Personally I think Markdown got _really_ popular not because it is easier to write but because it is easier to read.

It’s kind of a huge deal that I can give a Markdown file of plain text content to somebody non-technical and they aren’t overwhelmed by it in raw form.

HTML fails that same test.

[singingbard]

People had already ditched writing HTML for years before Markdown came out.

People were just using other markup languages like rST.

Other attempts had already proven HTML to be a bad language for rough documentation. Someone then just needed to write a spec that was easy to implement and Markdown was that.

[epolanski]

Or because it was the default in GitHub with an ad hoc renderer.

[Pxtl]

Imho the real strength of markdown is it forces people to stick to classes instead of styling. "I want to write in red comic Sans" " I don't care, you can't".

And markdown tables are harder to write than HTML tables. However, they are generally easier to read. Unless multi line cell.

[jbaber]

I usually just write html tables, then convert to markdown via pandoc. It's a crazy world we live in.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Is it really that much easier to write `<br>` and know that it isn't a problem, than just write `<br />`?

[barnabee]

It’s much easier to have to remember fewer rules and for things to be ok if you get some wrong, yes.

Especially for casual users of HTML.

[thisislife2]

User input data is always to be treated as suspect when it reaches the server and needs to be scanned and sanitised (if necessary) before accepting it for processing. Markdown makes this a lot easier to do and this is why it became popular.