Org files are regular text. Editing them in emacs' org "mode" makes certain text plain text elements behave dynamically (like cycling through or folding parts of an outline open/closed, etc, and more). The emacs text editor is super robust & extensible so you see people talk about custom set-ups, configurations, and workflows (which is a feature not a bug!) so it almost sounds over-the-top & superfluous to a non-user. The hardest part of using it for a non-coder is probably not getting bogged down with all that you can do and trying to follow how experts are using it before fully understanding the basics.

It is a simple text file, that's the beauty of it. The markup, that would necessary manually, is used by org-mode to help you the various possibilities (link, note, todo, outline...)

Except you need a variant of org-mode to use the file on another device, right? I've just posted my 'plain' plaintext file setup[0] if anyone cares to remark.

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[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930124