Medium does not need Markdown?

Medium is the best place to write English, definitely. However, the first image of Medium is that the site does not support Markdown. Seriously, why? Markdown is so helpful and I have used that for months in Jianshu.

Google "Medium Markdown", I soon find an official document that explains the reason.

One sentence to sum up - our writer is too good!

As indicated in the article:

One of the reasons its possible to have this really WYSIWYG experience is because we’ve stripped out a lot of the power that other editors give you. Here are things you can’t do: change fonts, font color, font size. You can’t insert tables or use strikethrough or even underline. Here’s what you can do:

bold
italics
subheads (two levels)
links
lists
blockquotes:

Which means, in Medium, a writer cannot even write underline and strike through (in Jianshu, Rich Text editor can). Besides, there are only two levels of header, which is good, since most header levels in Jianshu are either too large or too small.

Medium explains that it will make writer focus on writing.

In markdown, we often use "[]" or "**" to add formating to texts. In Medium, all happens when select texts.

Medium

The advantage of Markdown is that writer have no need of leaving the keyboard for formating. In my experiences, I use quotations and Hyper Links much more often than bold and italic (these annoy me a lot). Quotations and Hyper Links are the only two actions for me to use my mouse (or touch pad) to copy and paste. Of course I can use Ctr + Tab to select and Ctr + L to select the address, but I cannot select a link inside a passage.

This means I have to leave keyboard anyway. I am not using a Thinkpad with track point (I am using Cherry, actually).

The other functions like commits, center are designed much easier than Markdown. I now can understand why Medium does not need Markdown.