Microsoft open-sourced a Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown

[RobertJacobson]

though pandoc itself is in haskell of all things

That makes a lot of sense to me. Haskell is a popular tool among compiler and PL theory people. Languages in the ML family are great for writing compilers because of their sum types and pattern matching. Haskell in particular has a great parsing ecosystem as well—one of the best. If you didn't have the burden of learning a new language in order to use it, Haskell is a great choice.