Top all-time · #1036
Ben Kamens
Personal blog · bjk5.comprogrammingcareer
Ben Kamens writes Tumblr, a personal blog at bjk5.com about programming and career. Since 2010, 64 different Hacker News readers have linked it 103 times, most often “Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-05-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ben Kamens' blog mainly for his breakdown of Amazon's mega-menu hover technique, and also for his App Engine tips and A/B testing posts.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called a "classic" and "good" article on Amazon's mega-menu technique; "great" App Engine tips; a post that "summarizes it really well" on A/B testing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown20 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2013-03-06
- Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-03-02
- What traffic from 60 Minutes looks like3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-09-03
- Khan Academy: The most common feedback we give dev interns (2013)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-01-01
- Badges on App Engine: Implementing a real-time badge framework for Khan Academy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-01-02
- Video-game interface for Khan Academy ... built on Google Maps2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-11-24
- The App Engine Way2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-30
- Khan Academy Internship, Summer ‘112 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-09
- Getting your team to adopt new technology2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-24
- How Intern Mentorship Works At Khan Academy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-18
What Hacker News says?
Great work so far! I would suggest that when you have enough lessons, you create a knowledge tree instead of just a list, similar to what Khan Academy does ( http://bjk5.com/post/1664635835/constellation-knowledge ).
Comment linking /post/1664635835/constellation-knowledge
on “Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code”Submitted Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown as a story · 1734 points
HN discussionAmazon | AmazonUI (AUI) | Seattle; San Francisco | Onsite | Full-Time AUI is the Front-end platform being adopted on Amazon.com. We are modernizing the company's front end code base, while diving deep on latency, performance, API design, user experience, and cross browser/device compatibility. Basically, we need people who can build libraries, not just use them. Our team is incredibly customer-centric. For any given…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)”Submitted I Don't Understand as a story · 336 points
HN discussionGUI algorithms like these are not well documented anywhere (except, of course, all over the web and in source code! :-) ... Would be nice to have a site, maybe a wiki, dedicated to this kind of thing. Other interesting problems in this area: * Layout algorithms * Automatic assignment of keys for navigation (for nav w/o using a mouse) * Popup menu prediction [1] * Text breaking / paragraph layout [2] * Etc, etc, etc…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “How to draw S-curved arrows between boxes”Submitted Thankful and lucky to have helped build Khan Academy as a story · 141 points
HN discussionWe have a tool that does Canvas drawing from React too. Currently some pieces are cached in retained mode but it's just an implementation detail for certain performance characteristics. https://github.com/facebook/react-art Canvas APIs are currently not as fast as the DOM renderer. There's also a lot of added complexity with regards to layout, text flows and text input. The code you'd have to ship down to solve all…
Comment linking /post/53742233351/getting-your-team-to-adopt-new-technology
on “The Future of JavaScript MVCs”Submitted Google App Engine Mini Profiler as a story · 108 points
HN discussionRead this: http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-... for another useful example of this technique.
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Principles of Rich Web Applications”Submitted Khan Academy Lite as a story · 83 points
HN discussionA/Bingo, a Rails A/B testing plugin that I wrote in a part-time week and used for a few years. The main reason I'm proud of it is Ben Kamens and company ported it to run on Google App Engine for Khan Academy, where it formed the core of their experimentation platform for a while. http://bjk5.com/post/10171483254/abingo-split-testing-now-on...
Comment linking /post/10171483254/abingo-split-testing-now-on-app-engine-built-for
on “Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?”Submitted Video-game interface for Khan Academy ... built on Google Maps as a story · 82 points
HN discussionAmazon | AmazonUI (AUI) | Seattle; San Francisco | Onsite | Full-Time AUI is the Front-end platform being adopted on Amazon.com. We are modernizing the company's front end code base, while diving deep on latency, performance, API design, user experience, and cross browser/device compatibility. Basically, we need people who can build libraries, not just use them. Our team is incredibly customer-centric. For any given…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2015)”Submitted A/Bingo split testing now on App Engine, built for Khan Academy as a story · 69 points
HN discussionAUI is the Front-end platform being adopted on Amazon.com. We are modernizing the company's front end code base, while diving deep on latency, performance, API design, user experience, and cross browser/device compatibility. Basically, we need people who can build libraries, not just use them. Our team is incredibly customer-centric. For any given situation, we have to make the right choice on behalf of the folks us…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)”Submitted We started requiring code reviews for everything, and my head hasn't exploded as a story · 68 points
HN discussionAmazonUI (AUI) team at Amazon - Seattle or San Francisco - Full time - On-site only - Relocation packages available AUI is the Front-end platform being adopted on Amazon.com. We are modernizing the company's front end code base, while diving deep on latency, performance, API design, user experience, and cross browser/device compatibility. Basically, we need people who can build libraries, not just use them. Our team…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2015)”Submitted App Engine Performance Essentials You’ll Certainly Need, Part II - Ben Kamens as a story · 59 points
HN discussionGithub's site is really fast. Many of the pages it displays are dense with information and I think it displays everything well, for example viewing diffs in Github is very good, it smartly wraps all the text so you can view everything on the screen and everything loads fast. Try comparing it to Bitbucket's diff view, which can't wrap text amongst other things. It's light years better in comparison. It looks good at…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?”Submitted Teacher effectiveness ratings, programmers, and Khan Academy's data as a story · 55 points
HN discussionhttp://bjk5.com/post/14059107433/after-giving-logged-out-use...
Comment linking /post/14059107433/after-giving-logged-out-users-access-to-pretty-much
on “Sal Khan explains SOPA / PIPA”Submitted Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech as a story · 48 points
HN discussionAmazon | AmazonUI (AUI) | Seattle; San Francisco | Onsite | Full-Time AUI is the Front-end platform being adopted on Amazon.com. We are modernizing the company's front end code base, while diving deep on latency, performance, API design, user experience, and cross browser/device compatibility. Basically, we need people who can build libraries, not just use them. Our team is incredibly customer-centric. For any given…
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2015)”Submitted App Engine Performance Hacks You'll Probably Never Need, Part 1 as a story · 44 points
HN discussionAmazon have done this to improve the performance of dropdown menu. http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-...
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Show HN: JS library to make your website instant”Submitted Code Reviews as Relationship Builders as a story · 40 points
HN discussionIn the web sphere, I recall Amazon having done something like this in the very early days when there was a sidebar with categories that you could kinda drill into. Mouseover one, and there was an invisible triangle off to the right that if you kept inside of, it wouldn't switch the current category. https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Windows XP Professional”Submitted How Intern Mentorship Works At Khan Academy as a story · 38 points
HN discussionA classic article about a no-delay solution to this problem, not mentioned in the linked thread: https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...
Comment linking /post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
on “Windows XP Professional”Submitted Email Transparency at Khan Academy as a story · 35 points
HN discussion
