markdown: A great idea in action

I don’t code much. In fact, I don’t code at all, by most yardsticks.

I have been accused of making web pages in the past though, and while it is sort of fun to flow through the creative process, it is — in my opinion — a somewhat tedious process of matching brackets and hunting down transposed characters.

Which makes me a prime candidate for markdown. I have almost no need for the complications of the latest and greatest Saviour-Of-The-Web Protocol, I hate tracking down teeny tiny mismatches, and I’d much rather be spending my time searching for a baseball bat than searching for a lost bracket.

Our guest, in action:

 

So much nicer, cleaner and prettier. Between this and tidyhtml, my days of sifting through HTML files looking for a stray backslash are over.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that this type (style?) of tool is the de facto standard these days.

WordPress uses something similar when it converts these posts. Wikipedia does much the same thing. I’ve seen other sites offer the same style of conversion.

Can’t say as I blame them. There is a beauty and genius in cleverly and cleanly delivered code. But for those of us who are neither beautiful nor geniuses, there’s markdown. 😉