Krzysztof Kowalczyk

Most-linked posts?

1. Solo founders with profitable businesses, collected stories
   6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-07-07
2. /software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html
   6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-12-24
3. Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app
   6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-07-26
4. Extreme include discipline for C++ code
   4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-05-13
5. Go is an 80/20 language
   3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-27
6. /software/sumatrapdf/index.html
   3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-02-04
7. levelsio and survivorship bias
   3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-03-08
8. Thoughts on Go after writing 3 websites
   2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-12-31
9. Fast File Finder for Windows is a tool for quickly finding files by name
   2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-05
10. Fuzzing Markdown parser written in Go
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-02-01

What Hacker News says?

1. open-source-ux · 2021-08-17

   Users do notice speed issues in apps and websites. The NNGroup has done studies with users to gather reactions to slow websites in 1997 and 2010. They remain relevant in 2021 to both apps and websites: " Users really care about speed in interaction design " [1] A few weeks ago someone on HN shared the reflections of the developer of SumatraPDF - a native Windows PDF reader that is small, lightweight and performant (…

   Comment linking /article/2f72237a4230410a888acbfce3dc0864/lessons-learned-from-15-years-of-sumatrapdf-an-open-source-windows-app.html

   on “Psst: Fast Spotify client with native GUI, without Electron, built in Rust”
2. archimag0 · 2021-07-27

   Submitted Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app as a story · 350 points

   HN discussion
3. kjksf · 2019-01-14

   Just in case someone might need it: I reverse engineered their API and wrote (an unofficial) client for accessing the data: https://github.com/kjk/notionapi It's for Go but one could easily port it to any other language. It's just HTTP requests and some light processing of JSON responses. I use it so that I can have my blog content in Notion. In a daily cron job I download the data from Notion, convert it to HTML an…

   Comment linking /article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad28368174c/how-i-reverse-engineered-notion-api.html

   on “Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases”
4. ingve · 2017-08-04

   Submitted Porting 4.5K lines of C to Go as a story · 245 points

   HN discussion
5. fngjdflmdflg · 2024-03-28

   The startup speed for this app is really good. From my quick testing it seems like it is as fast or slightly faster than npp. I am surprised that QT can be that fast. I recall this line from the Sumatra PDF developer on why he chose win32 only: >The only way for one person to even attempt cross-platform app is to use a UI abstraction layer like Qt, WxWidgets or Gtk. >The problem is that Gtk is ugly, Qt is extremely…

   Comment linking /article/2f72237a4230410a888acbfce3dc0864/lessons-learned-from-15-years-of-sumatrapdf-an-open-source-windows-app.html

   on “NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++”
6. hu3 · 2019-04-06

   Submitted Lessons learned porting 50k loc from Java to Go as a story · 218 points

   HN discussion
7. kjksf · 2021-10-24

   I doubt that's true. I have literally hundreds of ideas. As an experiment I put them on a website for anyone to see and "steal": https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815... I'm not saying those are all great, profitable ideas. I'm saying that they are doable by a competent programmer and unique enough. Certainly not "done a zillion times by others".

   Comment linking /article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d8158c803ad1/ideas.html

   on “5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0”
8. jandeboevrie · 2025-06-15

   Submitted Simplest C++ Callback, from SumatraPDF as a story · 168 points

   HN discussion
9. greyskull · 2019-03-23

   Looks like it's this: https://www.notion.so/ It wasn't clear to me how the data was exported, but it seems the author built his own library: https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad2...

   Comment linking /article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad28368174c/how-i-reverse-engineered-notion-api.html

   on “Show HN: Everything I Know Wiki”
10. kkowalczyk · 2012-12-31

    Submitted Thoughts on Go after writing 3 websites as a story · 153 points

    HN discussion
11. kjksf · 2019-03-23

    I do a similar thing at https://blog.kowalczyk.info/ (under "My external brain"), e.g. section on programming: https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/d61b4f94b10d4d808d3d238a... I build a custom toolchain to generate it. All the content is stored in Notion (which is the fastest way I found to write and edit content). I wrote a Go program ( https://github.com/kjk/blog ) to convert that to html and deploy as a static sit…

    Comment linking /article/d61b4f94b10d4d808d3d238a4e7c4d10/programming.html

    on “Show HN: Everything I Know Wiki”
12. ukdm · 2011-06-21

    Submitted Experience porting 4k lines of C code to go as a story · 130 points

    HN discussion
13. jtmaher · 2022-10-02

    Another good one is Fast File Finder https://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/fast-file-finder-for-wi... . It's by the same guy who made SumatraPDF.

    Comment linking /software/fast-file-finder-for-windows/

    on “A surprising way to lose your files on Windows”
14. imartin2k · 2017-10-10

    Submitted Solo founders with profitable businesses, collected stories as a story · 129 points

    HN discussion
15. dcuthbertson · 2024-07-02

    I found your blog and your diary of a solo developer building a web app [0]. Maybe the answers to my questions are there. Thanks for this, too. [0]: https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/30da6655040f47e693f8e66e...

    Comment linking /article/30da6655040f47e693f8e66eacd308c1/diary-of-a-solo-dev-building-a-web-app.html

    on “Show HN: Edna, note taking app for developers”
16. amarsahinovic · 2013-01-02

    Submitted Go vs. Python for a simple web server as a story · 93 points

    HN discussion
17. walterbell · 2014-08-23

    Calibre can be configured to use the OS defaults for reading specific file extensions. The option is buried somewhere in the preferences menu of Calibre. On Windows, OSS SumatraPDF will read pdf, epub, djvi, fb, chm and more. You can preset 2up fullscreen & other options, including the carnival yellow default background. It's minimal and can be locked down more than Acrobat, but has still had a handful of public sec…

    Comment linking /software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html

    on “Announcing Calibre 2.0”
18. speckx · 2025-06-20

    Submitted I ported pigz from Unix to Windows as a story · 84 points

    HN discussion
19. kjksf · 2020-01-26

    I second "Mom Test Book" (you can watch author's YouTube talks that cover the topic https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/06817da6d15d429db3eec8f2... ). The thing is that most people think that idea validation is "Hey, this is my idea, what do you think?" "Mom Test Book" describes a way to discover valid ideas by asking question, not asking question to validate ideas you had by yourself. Still not easy by this point o…

    Comment linking /article/06817da6d15d429db3eec8f20c086a41/summary-of-the-mom-test-book-about-validating-business-ideas.html

    on “State of Independent SaaS [pdf]”
20. disadvantage · 2022-02-05

    Submitted Fast File Finder for Windows is a tool for quickly finding files by name as a story · 67 points

    HN discussion
21. kjksf · 2018-07-31

    I guess-estimated the numbers from several angles. What I came up with is that a single occupancy (i.e. one person per car) cost will be less than $10/hour, which is competitive with public transport ($2.50 (subsidized) bus ticket in San Francisco, assume an average 15 min ride). And it would drop significantly when sharing (2 to 4 people per car) or when deploying mini buses (they cost more to build and operate but…

    Comment linking /article/e79db1cb2fcf4329ac37591bfbb00782/how-profitable-can-waymo-be.html

    on “Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet a Teen Who Rides One Every Day”
22. todsacerdoti · 2022-05-13

    Submitted Extreme include discipline for C++ code as a story · 64 points

    HN discussion
23. Someone · 2022-04-18

    Google tells me the help viewer uses IE7 with ActiveX to display help pages ( https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/malici... ) Given that, I think this is better removed from any system. If you have to access .chm files, I would first try other tools for displaying html help ( https://blog.kowalczyk.info/articles/chm-reader-viewer-for-w... has a list)

    Comment linking /articles/chm-reader-viewer-for-windows.html

    on “7-Zip up to 21.07 on Windows allows privilege escalation and command execution”
24. jandeboevrie · 2025-09-25

    Submitted Implementing UI translation in SumatraPDF, a C++ Windows application as a story · 63 points

    HN discussion
25. nmz · 2020-10-30

    And apparently an even better solution is just putting the size in the format itself. No need to parse when you can just seek. https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/fc9203f7c72a4532b1ae51d0...

    Comment linking /article/fc9203f7c72a4532b1ae51d018fef7b3/trade-offs-in-designing-versatile-log-format.html

    on “Awk: `Begin { ` Part 1”
26. fogus · 2011-06-22

    Submitted Go vs. Python for a simple web server as a story · 51 points

    HN discussion
27. marcus_holmes · 2019-04-05

    I'd love to help, but my coding time is already taken building a product. I pretty much followed the instructions here: https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/acme/autocert edit, better here: https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/Jl3G/https-for-free-in-g... I didn't believe it could be that simple, but it worked first time and has proven really robust.

    Comment linking /article/Jl3G/https-for-free-in-go-with-little-help-of-lets-encrypt.html

    on “Self-Contained Pure-Go Web Server with Lua, MD, HTTP/2, QUIC, Redis Support”
28. todsacerdoti · 2021-07-26

    Submitted Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app as a story · 24 points

    HN discussion
29. barake · 2010-12-24

    This is really good advice - Adobe's reader is a performance destroyer. Foxit is getting bogged down with features but Sumatra [1] is simple and super fast. [1] http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-read...

    Comment linking /software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html

    on “If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer. ”
30. odovdor · 2011-05-16

    Submitted Easy vs. probable or how to make money with software as a story · 17 points

    HN discussion

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