It's even sadder because Org-Mode demonstrated how to do WYSIWYG right.
Apply the styling in real time, but then also show the formatting characters around it! That way you lose all of the weird WYSIWYG edge cases (will this character I type at the edge of a bold segment also be bold?), and you also teach WYSIWYG users Markdown in a natural way.
Ugh. No. This really breaks up the flow of the text.
I’m sure it’s fine for org-mode’s intended audience, but for people not from a coding background, it’s horrid. And there’s no need to “teach WYSIWYG users Markdown” when WYSIWYG is fine for them.
In my experience it doesn't particularly break up the flow of text. And as for "people not from a coding background", inline styling with visible formatting characters is exactly how Whatsapp implements its rich text editing. Considering it's an app with a billion and a half MAU, I think you might find that you have an unrealistically low opinion of non-developers' intelligence.
No, it doesn't. It's just syntax highlighting for markup. Disappearing formatting characters, which is what I switched Org to myself, is another story - it has some of the problems introduced by WYSIWYG.
It could remove the Markdown once the message has been sent, and only show it in editing mode. Then readers wouldn't have their flow disturbed, and authors could edit their messages in a sane way.
Apply the styling in real time, but then also show the formatting characters around it! That way you lose all of the weird WYSIWYG edge cases (will this character I type at the edge of a bold segment also be bold?), and you also teach WYSIWYG users Markdown in a natural way.