Really nice. I build a deck this year too. I would have loved to have a nice blog post like this beforehand.
I love his page. Inspires to write. Simple, clean, blog has 2 years break here and there, but writing!
Before doing myself, I did not know just how much work it is. It looked so simple. But it took me many weekends over a few months. Digging holes for concrete feet. Mixing concrete (I found its easy to do in a wheelbarrow) and pouring. Measuring (buy a laser level!). Cutting the posts. Then beams and joists. Noticing the wood I bought was not the same thickness everywhere (I thought my post height was off, but the laser level and my cut was perfect, the beams were not). Lastly just the decking was almost 1000 screws.
Lovely to see the entire process of planning all the way through building, and it's a nice change from the usual type of project shown on HN, and even a change from the way in which woodwork projects are normally presented
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_drawing_tool
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_curve is one of my favorites - any complicated curve you like, essentially, as a template tool, or you can use a flat spline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_spline (you might be familiar with splines as a concept from 3d rendering)
PS if you've ever wondered how they made such wonderfully perfect dotted lines... sometimes they "cheated", and similar versions exist with mechanical pencils: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dotted_Line_Tool_from_the...