As an Emacs user for over a decade I think this is brilliant, it solves my biggest gripes with org-babel which prevent me from using it in a team setting. Ledge is a lot like org-babel from Emacs, but for muggles: a familiar UI, and common format go a long way.
I was thinking the same in terms of similarity to org-babel (which can make some very nice runnable notebooks).
To be clear, is the issue with org-babel that it's not accessible to other people on the team? or something else that this solves?
Yes, exactly that. Org predates Markdown, however the Achilles heel is that it's tied to Emacs. I love Emacs, but I can't (ethically and pragmatically) force any editor/IDE on anyone. And as soon as a lone emacser commits an org file to a repo, it creates a disconnect.
Markdown (although it doesn't adhere to a strict standard) is ubiquitous, and support for Ledge notebooks degrades gracefully. If one doesn't have Ledge installed to run it, it can be assumed that their editor is able to render markdown. Even opened in a plain text editor, markdown is a lot easier on the eyes than org (IMHO).
UX matters.
I think it's mainly an issue of preference. Markdown is common these days and already exists in READMEs etc. I know it so I tend to prefer it. I also require the ability to access my notes from my phone and that's more of a challenge with org-babel.
I wonder what would org-babel for team settings look like? Disk/interchange format seems less interesting than what gets shipped around and what the UX feels like.
Hey thanks! This gives me the motivation to keep on evolving this project :)