For one, other markdowns haven't really stuck to a standard, so there are many slightly varied markdown variants and it gets annoying keeping up with them.

Another reason I prefer orgmode is the built in exporting functions are second to none. Customize the css and export to html, or my favorite is to export to latex+pdf, because everyone knows latex makes the most beautiful documents.

As an aspiring data scientist (transitioning senior sysadmin), the code snippets function and the ability to evaluate and execute code makes it the ideal data science notebook.

The power of lisp stands on its own.

Org mode task tracking, todo, GTD functions are also very awesome functions just markdown doesn't have.

That's just a few reasons, but orgmode isn't orgmode if it's in visual studio EEE version or whatever the duck new bullshit ms is doing imnsho.