rst is definitely better than markdown.
Honestly I also prefer textile to markdown.
And I sorta believe wikicreole is better than markdown.
I cannot understand for what reason MD has become popular, it has an annoying and confusing syntax for half of the things, supports many less things than others and is not stricly better in any way I can think of.
Supporting many less things is markdown's big advantage. It's a format that makes everything as simple as possible, but no simpler; it's the perfect format for "almost-plain" text like I often want in a readme - mostly plain text, but with headings, bulleted lists and the occasional hyperlink.
Compared to rst it's a lot easier to write links. I hadn't even heard of textile, but its link syntax also seems harder to write than markdown's. WikiCreole might be better, but right now figuring out what syntax a given wiki will support is far more of a crapshoot than using an arbitrary markdown implementation.
I cannot understand for what reason MD has become popular, it has an annoying and confusing syntax for half of the things, supports many less things than others and is not stricly better in any way I can think of.