Markdown formatting is exceptionally easy, faster to type (in comparison to hilighting and clicking formatting options), and I personally find it easier to format text to be much more readible in markdown.
For example, I recently created my first post in the forum and noticed even with all the rich text formatting options for messages, there is only an option for a code block and no option for an inline code snippet. I find inline code snippets to be very helpful for denoting what parts of the text are code and which parts are communication about the code. Only having the option to insert a code block makes it difficult to reference snippets of code in a sentence without resorting to quotes. I noticed it is possible to directly edit the html of a post, but I don't want to have to boot up an IDE for the possibility of reformating a code block into an inline code snippet.
Having access to markdown formatting would have made my recent post much easier to read specifically because inline code snippets don't break sentences over multiple lines and still render in a manner to make it obvious it is code.
