Code Medium

Is Medium suitable for writing about programming?

Medium supports verbatim code blocks, but that option is not discoverable. A secret keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-6) changes paragraph mode. Why it’s not in the the popup menu, like blockquote mode is?

Anyway, Ctrl-6 on an empty paragraph, then paste/write your code.

(println "Ctrl-6, then write code")  ; good

Not the other way round, or else you are screwed:

(println “Write code, then Ctrl-6”) ; bad, the quotes are wrong 

Embedding gists doesn’t work as well as one may expect:

https://gist.github.com/astanin/6019554

Inline `monospace` markup is not available on Medium. Forced substitution of double quotes (U+0022) may get in your way too.

Overall, Medium is an acceptable but not an exciting platform to write about programming. Distraction-free editing is nice, but Pen Editor can deliver almost as much on any other platform and is compatible with Markdown. Good offline editors can beat it easily. Readability of posts on Medium is a big deal, but it’s easy to copy. Discoverability of the written text on Medium is debatable.