--- title: "The Crazy History of Markdown" url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-crazy-history-of-markdown-jtzy9utgt source_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyEBBJDxb74 type: video:youtube source: "Coding with Lewis" published: 2026-05-29T16:40:07.199Z updated: 2026-05-29T16:40:43.659Z reading_time: 1 upvotes: 1 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Crazy History of Markdown **[Coding with Lewis](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis)** · 1 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Markdown was created in 2004 by John Gruber as a lightweight markup language to make writing for the web readable in raw form while still converting to formatted HTML. Its original spec was intentionally loose, leading different platforms like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Reddit to develop their own flavors. A 2014 attempt to standardize it as CommonMark was rejected by Gruber himself, who preferred flexibility. Despite the lack of a unified standard, Markdown now powers developer documentation, blogging platforms, note-taking apps, and chat systems across the internet. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How Markdown took over the world](https://daily.dev/posts/how-markdown-took-over-the-world-vnzl3v3f5) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Markdown \(Aaron Swartz: The Weblog\)](https://daily.dev/posts/markdown-aaron-swartz-the-weblog--ds2vgoaxp) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why the heck are we still using Markdown??](https://daily.dev/posts/why-the-heck-are-we-still-using-markdown--mud109xly) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-crazy-history-of-markdown-jtzy9utgt)