I've actually tried some other markup languages like asciidoc, but went back to markdown since I found it's hard to cooperate with others with another markup language like asciidoc and it's harder to find something else than asciidoctor to render it. I could write blog posts in asciidoc but in order to make it parse-able for my SSG I'd still have to compile it to markdown.
Might have missed the joke here. This isn't a traditional C++ backend; it's a C++ Template Metaprogramming backend. The code isn't meant to be run—it’s meant to be compiled. The "output" you see is actually just a compiler error message because the program forces the compiler to calculate primes during type checking. The "runtime performance" the author mentioned is actually just how long g++ takes to crash your ram.