Top all-time · #5780
D2 Documentation
Company blog · terrastruct.com/blogprogrammingdesign
D2 Documentation is the company blog at terrastruct.com, writing about programming and design. Since 2020, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Show HN: Terrastruct – A Diagramming Tool for Systems”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (26) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link terrastruct.com mainly to promote the Terrastruct diagramming tool, the D2 diagram language and the TALA layout engine. The comments discuss the product and its pricing, not the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 26 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
D2 is a modern DSL that turns text to diagrams.
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: Terrastruct – A Diagramming Tool for Systems6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-01-02
- /tala/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-12-21
- /2 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-03-02
- Generate diagrams programmatically with D22 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-01-14
- How to draw beautiful software architecture diagrams (2022)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-27
- Diagram layout engines: Minimizing hierarchical edge crossings2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-30
What Hacker News says?
I quit my job at Google a little over a year ago to work full time on my product. I still don't make near half the salary, but that connection to my users using a product I built is something that, prior to this last year, I didn't know I'd be so attached to. Users message me to appreciate some small look & feel improvements, they leave feedback and I fix things for them, I get excited about a new feature and it bri…
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on “My product is my garden”Submitted Show HN: Terrastruct – A Diagramming Tool for Systems as a story · 187 points
HN discussionI bet the companies using inventive ways to get their first users like the ones listed in the article are in the minority (but certainly make for more interesting stories to read/write about). I launched a SaaS product recently, and after a pretty successful HN launch, I've been trying different ways of marketing. What I learned, and this may be obvious to many, is that the boring path of getting users by gamifying…
Comment linking /blog/10-tips-diagrams-system-design-interview/
on “How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users”Submitted Elastic Search (ELK) high level architecture diagram as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm building a autolayout algorithm specifically [0] for software diagrams. The autolayout algorithm will be used for generating pretty software architecture diagrams from text that get you 90% of the way there, and then you can tweek it to perfection via a UI. I have an alpha out of the algorithm on https://terrastruct.com and it's by far the hardest thing I've worked on, and it mostly works, though I'm constantly…
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on “Ask HN: What are you working on?”Submitted Deep dive into diagram layout engines: Minimizing hierarchical edge crossings as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTerrastruct | Engineering - Go, React | SF Bay area (remote during covid only) | Full-Time | https://terrastruct.com Terrastruct is modernizing software architecture diagrams. Diagrams and diagramming tools are essential to software teams, but most are stuck all-purpose tools meant for HR, marketing, and engineering, even though engineering diagrams are much more complex -- it's like using Microsoft Word for coding.…
Comment linking /careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2021)”Submitted Generate diagrams programmatically with D2 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTerrastruct | Programming language engineer | SF, Remote ok for senior (US/CAN) | Full-time | $120-$200K base | 0.2-1.5% equity We’re looking for a programming language expert to build a modern diagramming DSL. Terrastruct is a diagramming tool for software architecture. Current diagramming tools are closer to design tools than dev tools. We’re going to enable software teams around the world to define diagrams with…
Comment linking /docs/d2/tour/intro/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2022)”Submitted Terrastruct Is 1.0 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTerrastruct | Senior software engineer (4+ yoe) - Go, React | SF Bay area preferred, remote okay for right person | Full-Time | https://terrastruct.com Terrastruct is modernizing software architecture diagrams. Diagrams and diagramming tools are essential to software teams, but most are stuck using general-purpose tools meant for HR, marketing, and engineering, even though engineering diagrams are much more complex…
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on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2021)”Submitted Terrastruct Is 1.0 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDocument software design 10x better. The foundation is flowcharts, with support for individual layers distinguishing levels of abstraction, and scenarios for exploring use-cases. From there: - Live data. We look at metrics on dashboards but it doesn't put into perspective how they relate to each other. Imagine seeing on your flowchart of servers, that one worker has an anomalous CPU reading, and you can click into t…
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on “Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?”Submitted How to draw beautiful software architecture diagrams (2022) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTerrastruct | Software Engineer | SF, Remote ok for senior (US/CAN) | Full-time | $120-$200K base | 0.2-1.5% equity Terrastruct ( https://terrastruct.com/ ) is a diagramming tool for software architecture. Drawing software diagrams on a general-purpose tool like LucidChart or Draw.io feels like coding on Google Docs. It has a lot of the features I don't care about and lacks ones I wish existed. So, I built one for m…
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on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2022)”Submitted Diagram layout engines: Minimizing hierarchical edge crossings as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTerrastruct | Software Engineer | SF, Remote ok for senior (US) | Full-time | $120-$200K base | 0.2-2% equity Terrastruct ( https://terrastruct.com/ ) is a diagramming tool for software architecture. Drawing software diagrams on a general-purpose tool like LucidChart or Draw.io feels like coding on Google Docs. It has a lot of the features I don't care about and lacks ones I wish existed. So, I built one for my need…
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on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021)”Submitted Diagram layout engines: Minimizing hierarchical edge crossings as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI've recently started using Terrastruct, which I've come to enjoy as I feel like I can quickly put together business logic and share it with the team without the tool getting in the way: https://terrastruct.com/
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on “Ask HN: What diagrams do you use in software development?”Submitted Generating diagrams programmatically as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm a big fan of Terrastruct ( https://terrastruct.com/ ). They focus on building great software for visualizing complex software architecture. Their secret sauce is this idea of attention where they allow you to zoom in and out so you can get the 10 foot view or 10,000 foot view, whatever you find most useful.
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on “Ask HN: Visualizing software designs, especially of large systems (if at all)?”Submitted Functional testing with your database in Go as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSince it's relevant here, I will throw my hat into the ring for diagramming tools. Terrastruct is a diagramming tool specifically made for software architecture. It allows you to express complexity by splitting the diagram up into layers and scenarios. Layers separate levels of abstraction, and scenarios describe what happens under certain conditions (e.g. server goes down). These are just things I wanted personally…
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on “Architecture Playbook”The proprietary layout engine is named TALA. IMO the docs are pretty transparent about TALA being closed source and behind a paywall. TALA docs: https://d2lang.com/tour/tala/ TALA product page: https://terrastruct.com/tala/
Comment linking /tala/
on “D2 Playground”> This is why you want to limit the amount of information to process to the most relevant ones, to make the most relevant thing easy to transfer. This is the limitation of a single image diagram. Anything worth diagramming has some complexity; which means you have to remove critical info or risk it becoming confusingly messy. > A widespread mistake is to mix abstraction levels inside a diagram. This really increases…
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on “Better Architecture Diagrams for Agile Teams: actionable tips and lessons”Congrats on the launch! I'm the author of D2 (Terrastruct). I won't comment on comparisons you want to make as it's your launch, but just to clarify, we do have a programmatic API: - https://terrastruct.com/blog/post/generate-diagrams-programm... - https://d2lang.com/tour/api/
Comment linking /blog/post/generate-diagrams-programmatically
on “Vizdom: Diagrams as Code”Terrastruct ( https://terrastruct.com ) supports this too (diagramming tool specifically for software architecture) Example: https://app.terrastruct.com/diagrams/1914249269
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on “Rough.js – Create graphics with a hand-drawn, sketchy, appearance”SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote My company is a diagram maker for software architecture ( https://terrastruct.com ). Currently there's a number of companies interested in the product and how they could use it in their organization. I'm looking for someone who's proficient at diagramming software architecture to create a detailed diagram of a piece of their software given access to their codebase. If you're interested, p…
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on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2020)”The problem with this sort of thing is that there doesn't seem to be a consensus on: >What does an algorithm look like? I like to at least pretend that I'm a visual person (have to justify my BFA in graphic design _somehow_), and usually reach for: - https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/ (a Blockly version (think Scratch) of the 3D programming system OpenSCAD) or - https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor and…
Comment linking /blog/post/draw-software-architecture-diagrams/
on “Code as Art”https://terrastruct.com/
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on “Ask HN: Where are all the cool architecture diagrams?”