Anil Dash’s article on Markdown’s origins is a reminder that the internet was built by generous people who made good things and gave them away.

The whole piece is worth your time, especially the bits about Aaron Swartz as a teenage beta tester and the fact that every frontier AI model is now being wrangled through a format John Gruber made for his Apple blog, and for his friends.

But it’s worth understanding how these simple little text files were born, not just because I get to brag about how generous and clever my friends are, but also because it reminds us of how the Internet really works: smart people think of good things that are crazy enough that they just might work, and then they give them away, over and over, until they slowly take over the world and make things better for everyone.

How Markdown Took Over the World