Top all-time · #2545
pketh.org
Personal blog · pketh.orgdesignprogramming
pketh.org is a personal blog at pketh.org about design and programming. Since 2020, 28 different Hacker News readers have linked it 63 times, most often “How Kinopio is Made (using state, localStorage, API, and WebSockets)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link pketh.org for posts on running a one-person hardware company and on Kinopio's engineering stack, plus essays like organic software. Comments are mixed, with pushback on two posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Making things simple, radical and beautiful
Most-linked posts?
- How Kinopio is Made (using state, localStorage, API, and WebSockets)6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-11-13
- Saying Bye to Glitch4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-05-28
- Why Sell Lifetime Plans, in a Default Subscription World?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-12-04
- Kinopio's Design Principles4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-08
- Why Software Is Slow and Shitty2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-08
- The Hybrid Architecture of Kinopio for iOS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-06
- Dialing Up the Internet Phonebook2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-18
- Why Just Passwords?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-11
- The Lo-Fi Art and Human Tools Era2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-04
What Hacker News says?
ooh also check out kinopio, a tool that I've recently fallen in love with https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html https://kinopio.club/
Comment linking /how-kinopio-is-made.html
on “The tools and tech I use to run a one-woman hardware company”Submitted How I Build as a story · 244 points
HN discussionThis is a true solo developer: http://pketh.org/archives/ It looks like this thread is turning into general blog recommendations. I like these, and they haven't been listed: https://macwright.org/ https://tonsky.me/ https://nadiaeghbal.com/posts/
Comment linking /archives/
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted Digging into PlantStudio, a bit late as a story · 225 points
HN discussionSure! I wrote this to explains most of it https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html let me know if you have other Qs
Comment linking /how-i-build.html
on “Kinopio”Submitted Making the Kinopio source code public as a story · 219 points
HN discussionOrganic farming isn't really about transparency, but obfuscation nor is it always the more sustainable option. I would rethink your metaphor about organic software[0]. [0]: https://pketh.org/organic-software
Comment linking /organic-software
on “Kinopio”Submitted In search of organic software as a story · 85 points
HN discussionIn this case I started with some mockups a looong time ago, and I've been building primarily in code ever since. Maybe helpful: - https://pketh.org/designing-for-thinking.html - https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html - https://pketh.org/glitch-look-and-feels.html
Comment linking /glitch-look-and-feels.html
on “Kinopio”Submitted The building blocks of offline support as a story · 83 points
HN discussionthe thing after it, the web development tool/community https://pketh.org/the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
Comment linking /the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
on “Kinopio”Submitted Redesigning an app, one day a week at a time as a story · 76 points
HN discussionCongrats on the launch! I'm also a fan of glitch so congrats on that good job too. Just out of curiosity have been reading the engineering part and came across with below for not using websockets, confused because debounce and throttle is mainly used to avoid many updates over sockets so it's very well known problem for reactive programming ( https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html ) > You might be wondering, why…
Comment linking /how-kinopio-is-made.html
on “Kinopio”Submitted How I do support and community as a story · 38 points
HN discussionIn this case, everything is hand made (built in Vue and not much else) https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html
Comment linking /how-i-build.html
on “Kinopio”Submitted Dialing Up the Internet Phonebook as a story · 20 points
HN discussionOh Hi, I'm the solo creator of Kinopio. Before this, I was the designer and co-creator of Glitch. I'll go through and answer things, feel free to AMA. If you're curious about me or about the process of designing/creating, these blog posts might be helpful: - https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html - https://pketh.org/designing-for-thinking.html - https://pketh.org/the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
Comment linking /the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
on “Kinopio”Submitted Saying Bye to Glitch as a story · 16 points
HN discussionmy approach was actually indirectly inspired by the process used to make mario64 – to start with the core interactions (in my case dragging and connecting cards) and make those feel good to use in isolation. Then building the rest of the app around that. I wrote a little bit about that in https://pketh.org/why-software-is-slow-and-shitty.html
Comment linking /why-software-is-slow-and-shitty.html
on “How I Build”Submitted Making a Marketing Page as a story · 14 points
HN discussionCool people: • https://tracydurnell.com • https://www.benkuhn.net • https://schmud.de • https://brandur.org • https://bytes.zone • https://cassidoo.co • https://www.chrbutler.com • https://sive.rs • https://fasterthanli.me • https://akkartik.name • https://www.todepond.com • https://blog.gingerbeardman.com • https://gwern.net • https://interconnected.org • https://jacobfilipp.com • https://johnnywebber.com • https:/…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite blog in 2024?”Submitted Towards a better whiteboard as a story · 9 points
HN discussionHey HN, Kinopio is a visual thinking tool that can be used for things like brainstorming, organizing thoughts, mood-boards, planning, basically for figuring stuff out (by yourself or collaboratively). I've been building it for the last year after leaving my job as the co-creator of Glitch ( http://pketh.org/hello-kinopio ). There's no sign up required to use it, let me know what you think, thx! – Pirijan
Comment linking /hello-kinopio
on “Show HN: Kinopio.club – visual thinking, brainstorming tool”Submitted The Lo-Fi Art and Human Tools Era as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThe ‘organic’ term here is referring to funding, not design. That said ‘paving the cow paths’ can be a very effective way to build/design what people want. Another post of mine addresses this directly: https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html
Comment linking /how-i-build.html
on “In search of organic software”Submitted How Kinopio is Made (using state, localStorage, API, and WebSockets) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI'm just one small voice but I still have fun with computers on the web. Every day, I build https://kinopio.club and enjoy it. Maybe that's partly because experience has taught me to deliberately/conservatively pick the technologies that I build with ( https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html ). Basically, I avoid douchebag tech. I'm not a gifted coder. My only real talent is a strong bullshit detector.
Comment linking /how-kinopio-is-made.html
on “Computers Aren't Fun Anymore (2020)”Submitted Why Sell Lifetime Plans, in a Default Subscription World? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThanks :) So besides https://kinopio.club (which I work on now), I was the co-creator of glitch.com (it's changed a lot now though, this post captures my work on it https://pketh.org/the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html ) The blog does have https, but I accidentally added the non https url to HN. Not sure if I can change it though
Comment linking /the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
on “Redesigning an app, one day a week at a time”Submitted Why Software Is Slow and Shitty as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
