hi, Adam here, I wrote the article. Really interesting comments. Just for the record, I am in favor of the command line tool, and I have also posted numerous articles on better alternatives :)
I'd suggest some things here:
* Do not post; wait. I don't know what was going on when you wrote [2], but you were clearly not in a mood to write anything constructive. Maybe you should have skipped [2] and only write your second article about markdown (not that I really agree with it either (see below), but at least it is developed).
* I don't really see the point in complaining alone. Maybe you should look for alternatives, and post them along with your complains. Or if you don't know any and don't want/have time to look for one, ask people (I don't know if you can easily add things like discuss on Ghost). For [1], I think you would like GitLab, for example.
Honestly, after reading your article about markdown (the long one), I don't feel like reading any other of your articles. Not that it's bad, but I waited the whole article for some things that never came[], and ended up feeling like I wasted my time there: I just listened to someone complaining about something (mainly about being bad for doing things it's not really meant to do), and nothing else. So now I expect to experience the same with any of your articles (and I'm probably wrong), and I may be missing some great things. [] I was expecting some kind of "solution". Alternatives? Anything?
~
About the article:
You complain about markdown, but use Ghost for your blog (or can you write blog posts with something else on Ghost? Didn't see any from their home page). You never mention any alternative.
Maybe because there isn't many that are:
* easy to read without being parsed, with most of the syntax being somewhat explicit
* can be used to produce "clean" html
* widely used (with some flavors but mainly the same syntax)
And that's markdown (to me at least). It's not here to replace html, MS Word, etc. More like replacing bbcode and other ugly syntaxes. You sound like you'd rather use plain html, but do you? Would anyone rather use plain html than markdown (when available) for writing simple formatted text? (well yes, some would.. xD)
Markdown could greatly benefit from standardization, though. That was the one valid point in your article, imho. It's sad but I haven't seen many big differences anyway, except: * some space differences (line breakings, etc.), but no change in the meaning of the syntax * lists must be preceded by an empty line on some parsers * custom syntax for additional parsing (images, etc.) but well, that's not really a problem with markdown, more like a problem with ghost-flavored (or anythingelse-flavored) markdown
It's not perfect, and still wouldn't be even if standardized (but would be much closer); but I see no better alternative. And neither do you, seemingly. (so no, I did not find your "numerous articles on better alternatives" =/)