Top all-time · #12823
Kevin Lin
Personal blog · kevinslin.com · on HN as kevinslinprogrammingwritingcareer
Kevin Lin's personal blog at kevinslin.com covers programming, writing and career. Since 2014, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Kevin Lin's notes on documentation types (tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, references) and on organising knowledge and hierarchies. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Kevin Lin builds tools for humans and agents.
What Hacker News says?
Thanks for the props. As with all things, its a matter of tradeoffs. Dendron started its life as a standalone app (eg. think Obsidian) but I quickly realized I was spending most of my time building undifferentiated editor scaffolding instead of focusing on the hierarchies and schemas that made Dendron unique. I wanted to spend more time building out features that supported Dendron's [hiearchy first approach]( https:…
Comment linking /notes/3dd58f62-fee5-4f93-b9f1-b0f0f59a9b64.html
on “Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought”Submitted Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison as a story · 668 points
HN discussionfoam is a note taking tool heavily modeled after roam research and backlinks. the core foam extension mainly focuses on stitching together third party extensions for most of its functionality. dendron is also, in part, inspired by roam (backlinks, daily journals, etc) but is built around the notion of [hierarchical note taking]( https://www.kevinslin.com/notes/3dd58f62-fee5-4f93-b9f1-b0f0... ). dendron takes the str…
Comment linking /notes/3dd58f62-fee5-4f93-b9f1-b0f0f59a9b64.html
on “Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought”Submitted Product Market Fit as a story · 157 points
HN discussionFYI, following that link brings us to a link about hierarchies https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/f3a41725-c5e5-4851-a6ed-5f5410... which then attempts to link to an 'axiom' which is 404: https://www.kevinslin.com/organizing/its_not_you_its_your_kn...
Comment linking /organizing/its_not_you_its_your_knowledge_base/
on “Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode”Submitted My Notes on the Lean Startup as a story · 113 points
HN discussionThe problem with externalizing information (note taking) is that past a point, it becomes difficult to find information again when you need it (because you have too much information to comb through). wrote extensively on this in [It's Not You - It's Your Knowledge Base]( https://www.kevinslin.com/notes/e1455752-b052-4212-ac6e-cc05... ) I find that at the end of the day, the only thing that works over long periods of…
Comment linking /notes/e1455752-b052-4212-ac6e-cc054659f2bb.html
on “Xournalpp++ – closs-platform, open source note taking software”Submitted Investigating Multi-Account IAM Issues in S3 and CloudFront as a story · 43 points
HN discussionArticles like this often inspire wishful thinking (aka - if I bookmark this page or highlight its content, I know have access to all the mental models). I find mental models like knowledge in general - useful only if you can find the relevant entry *when needed*. They're not useful if just collected on a shelf but ingrained into memory and lived as everyday live. That being said, first step of ingraining useful ment…
Comment linking /notes/LMpLWbLBIfRzkSjJlF7U1
on “Mental model examples and their explanations”Submitted It's Not You, It's Your Knowledge Base – Thoughts on Better Note Taking as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI like to have a fairly regular routine with consistent time to wake up every morning. The typical day is divided into four phases: - morning: start of with yoga and focus on most important work before noon - noon: take a breather with running, have lunch and read up on hacker news - afternoon: more work, mix in nap and meditation to get through the afternoon - evening: wind down, prepare for next day You can find a…
Comment linking /notes/qm4lvh7xusf8tufke30gr2q
on “Ask HN: How do you organize your routine?”Submitted A Hierarchy First Approach to Note Taking as a story · 6 points
HN discussionfor documentation, I found it's helpful to think of what you're trying to accomplish theres a fantastic talk about the 4 types of documentation ( https://www.kevinslin.com/notes/89cefe18-cc6e-423e-8876-bc57... ) which i've listed below: - tutorials - how to guides - explanations - references for internal software teams, I found explanation and references to be the most useful. in case you were also looking for a doc…
Comment linking /notes/89cefe18-cc6e-423e-8876-bc57b3821023.html
on “Ask HN: How Do You Write Documentation”Submitted Everything I Learned from One Year of AWS Consulting as a story · 6 points
HN discussion[Dendron]( https://dendron.so ) is meant to be the fastest way for people to create, reference, and collaborate on knowledge. It is based on a [hierarchal first approach to note taking]( https://www.kevinslin.com/notes/3dd58f62-fee5-4f93-b9f1-b0f0... ). Hierarchy first means that Dendron helps you effortlessly create, manage, and reference your notes through flexible hierarchies. I call it anti-roam because instead…
Comment linking /notes/3dd58f62-fee5-4f93-b9f1-b0f0f59a9b64.html
on “Show HN: Dendron – open-source, local first, anti-roam note-taking tool”Submitted Quit Your Job as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lambda Idle Timeouts Before a Cold Start (2019) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Slack Is the Modern Knowledge Base as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes on the Mom Test as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted On Suffering as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted An Iterative Approach to Writing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted It's not you, its your knowledge base as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted It's not you – it's your knowledge base as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The end of coldstarts, double dipping, and other takeaways from re:Invent 2019 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Amazon Cloud Development Kit (CDK): A Whirlwind Tour as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Everything You Never Wanted to Know about EC2 Reserved Instances as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Personal Cloud Computing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes on How to Decide by Annie Durke as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes on the Art of Learning as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Notes on Hooked as a story · 1 points
HN discussion