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Comment by IncreasePosts | Hacker News Reader

You probably want to check out the rest of his site, which is pretty much on par with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ciechanow.ski

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His mechanical watch piece is really something to behold.

I'd love to know how long it takes him to make each one of these "interactive essays"

I'd love to read about how he does it. How talented do you have to be to not only learn all this stuff but also model them in 3D and simulate them in real time and interactively?

Guessing from personal experience, I would not be surprised if 70 % of the domain knowledge is learned in the process of writing and modeling.

Whenever I encounter a tricky subject I'm having a hard time learning, I start writing an article explaining it to someone else. It really forces me to confront the gaps of my knowledge because I can see so clearly that "Wait, I can't explain what happens between these two steps here. What am I missing?"

I would also be interested in knowing which software is used?

Hah. That question comes up on every single one of his explainers. The answer is none; he hand-crafts the JavaScript and WebGL shaders. From the design language, I’d guess he has built up a library of templates and snippets to draw from by now, but all in all, each of these pages is a bespoke work of art.

https://ciechanow.ski/js/airfoil.js

:head-exploding-emoji:

Looks like pure JavaScript using the WebGL Canvas.

A long time would be my guess but writing interactive articles is much more engaging and addicting. We've started adding interactive stuff to our docs and it is really engaging so the spent hours just fly by!

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