alt Hacker NewsI used to flip the link syntax all the time too. What finally helped me to remember it was noticing how I write links in plaintext emails.
In email, I naturally write things like "...on the example website (www.example.com)..."
Markdown keeps those () in the same place, and just adds the [] so you can delimit the visible text: "...on the [example website](www.example.com)..."
I remember it like this: If you squint the brackets around the link text make a rectangle and look almost like a button you can press. [Press here](to.go.there)