Comment by pie_flavor

HTML requires you to understand symbolic representations, where <> means something special. It is more verbose, but no more structurally complex, than Markdown. It does not require you to understand imperative dynamic logic. Getting the hang of symbolic representations is easy, and getting the hang of imperative programming is very hard and most people can't do it. That's why the dividing line is where it is. Making a static bulleted list isn't a 'capability' in HTML if you weren't thinking it was one in Markdown, and inventing your own precisely crafted definition with no purpose other than to include HTML then calling all others unreasonable doesn't convince anyone.