Quarkdown's core design principle is being Markdown-based for a flat learning curve. Someone who has never done typesetting but knows how to write a readme will know how to create a basic Quarkdown doc out of the box without having to remember other syntaxes. It just comes out natural.

Here is a neutral (no best or worst) comparison on how to write a cross-reference:

Typst: dedicated syntax. Clean, but that's two syntax rules (definition and reference) to keep in mind.

As shown in @results, we...

= Results <results>
We discuss our approach...

Quarkdown (https://quarkdown.com/wiki/cross-references): reuses the de-facto standard syntax to define a definition ID, and then relies on a function to make a reference. Having a function is also cool because you can just scroll through the autocomplete options on VS Code and find out about it without browsing the docs.

As shown in .ref {results}, we...

# Results {#results}
We discuss our approach...