I've been using one flavour or another of UNIX (including Linux) for 35 years and I still have this problem. (Not aided because the order of operands for ln and ln -s are mirrored: it's as infuriating as the meaning of || and && in csh compared to sh/bash, except csh is really of historic interest rather than in day to day use these days.)
https://social.kernel.org/objects/b48cb5ed-e156-40f6-93c6-506a1cb6ae17
It's the USB plug of commands. For a little over 35 years, I just keep typing the command until it stops giving error messages.
Yes, I could look it up every time.
And that same kid can still go away.
@SteveBellovin @RoyBrander @cstross It got easier when I realized you do not have to specify linkname unless it is different from the target filename