Using Markdown¶
Introduction¶
Proactive programmers normally don't use Google Docs or Microsoft Word to edit either their source code or their technical documentation. Instead, you can use VS Code to write all of your documentation in a markup language called Markdown. Guess what? A significant amount of the content on this site was written in Markdown! You can learn some of the features of Markdown by studying this site's source code and reading the following resources that will help you to learn how to use Markdown for technical writing.
Features¶
Markdown offers several constructs that support technical writing, including the following:
- Inline source code samples
- Fenced source code block
- Nestable sections
- Ordered and unordered lists
- Links to images and web sites
A platform like GitHub can render Markdown into text that looks like you wrote it in a word processor! You can learn more about these constructs by checking these resources.
Resources¶
It is worth noting that the last tool in this list is called a "linter" because it can check for small mistakes in a programmer's technical writing. Many proactive programmers use linters in GitHub Actions to ensure that they don't write Markdown that does not display correctly when a web browser views the technical writing in a GitHub repository.
Okay, now let's learn how to install, configure, and use a terminal application!