Plain text outlives its tools. A markdown file written today opens in vi, in an editor that does not exist yet, and in whatever replaces both.
Some things that survive in plain text:
- The words themselves
- Structure — headings, lists, emphasis
- Links, as long as the far end holds up
Some things that do not:
- Layout that depended on a specific renderer
- Anything stored only in a proprietary database
- Formatting applied by clicking buttons
The trade is real. You give up the immediate feedback of a visual editor and get durability in exchange. For a blog that mostly holds notes, that is a good trade.
The best format is the one you can still read in twenty years.
Nothing here is novel. It is worth restating anyway, because the pull toward heavier tooling is constant and mostly unexamined.