Learning Markdown

Introduction

In this blog post I am going to share why you should learn Markdown and why it is an excellent tool for everyone to understand and make their text based delivery more efficient and formatted. Fun fact: this blog is written in Markdown!

Yes, this blog is written in Markdown!

Markdown syntax, easy to remember

Markdown syntax is easy, widely used, even you may have used it to type Bold or Italic styled text in Instant Messaging applications.

• You can make any text Bold by enclosing it in double asterisks.
• You can highlight a code snippet print("hello world!") by enclosing it in backticks.
• You can create a formatted list by using a dash:
  • This is a sub list.
• You can mention a quote by starting it with a Angle bracket:

  Did you see Mustafa's new blog?

All without moving your fingers off the keyboard.

Making text delivery efficient and formatted

Let's compare two messages sent through Microsoft Teams with and without Markdown formatting:

Example 1:

Plaintext

Should I deploy this to PROD and include the release 1.2.3?

Markdown

Should I deploy this to PROD and include the release 1.2.3?

Example 2:

Plaintext

I am getting this error and am not able to figure it out. Can you help? Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "Invalid" at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(NumberFormatException.java:65) at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Integer.java:580) at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Integer.java:615) at set07102.MyClass.main(MyClass.java:68)

Markdown

I am getting this error and am not able to figure it out. Can you help?

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "Invalid"
  at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(NumberFormatException.java:65)
  at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Integer.java:580)
  at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Integer.java:615)
  at set07102.MyClass.main(MyClass.java:68)

Conclusion

Markdown is supported widely, works cross platforms, is easy to remember and increases your typing speed. As a result, you can make text based delivery more easy to understand without lifting fingers off your keyboard.

I hope you will try it out in your next Microsoft Teams or Discord message.