I used to get this wrong all the time too. Mentally, I'd be thinking "ln -s source destination", where source was the link and destination was what it pointed to. Of course, that's completely backwards. 'man ln' on OSX didn't help either, since they use the terminology 'source_file [target_file]' which just re-inforced my incorrect thinking (target sounds like something that is pointed to, does it not?).
As other people have mentioned, thinking of it in terms of the files created (ala cp) has helped to learn the correct behavior. I think this is a case where some minor change in the documentation might help to avoid the whole problem.
As other people have mentioned, thinking of it in terms of the files created (ala cp) has helped to learn the correct behavior. I think this is a case where some minor change in the documentation might help to avoid the whole problem.