[HN Gopher] Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition
___________________________________________________________________
Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition
Author : Smaug123
Score : 295 points
Date : 2020-10-24 10:10 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gresearch.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gresearch.co.uk)
| leke wrote:
| Trying to learn Finish vocab, Anki made me realize I had terrible
| recall. Sometimes, I couldn't even remember what the last
| freaking card was, and I would forget most things the next day,
| and everything the day after. After about 3 weeks, I had only
| remembered 3 or 4 words, so I gave up.
| pritovido wrote:
| I thought I had bad recall, but the fact is that I did not know
| about the memory.
|
| I have trained people in my environment and they have improved
| enormously.
|
| It is a very good idea that you read a book about mnemonics,
| and all the techniques, things like exaggerating pictures or
| places in your head, remembering faces, what a neural
| connection is and so on, and start applying it.
|
| My upper limit (in anki) is over 400 new words in a different
| language (like chinese or japanese) per day with extreme
| exhaustion, not doing anything the entire day but memorizing.
| This is the equivalent of running a marathon for me on the
| mental field(I have done real marathons too).
|
| My lower limit is learning 40-50 new words per day. It takes 1
| hour,more than a minute per word and no significant effort, I
| do this as daily routine with now consequences for my work.
|
| Over time, learning new languages become easier and easier.
|
| The world opens a lot when you can go to places like China or
| Japan and at least you understand what the symbols on the
| street or the people say. You get a much deeper knowledge about
| things.
|
| Anki is one of the most amazing things ever invented.
| Luc wrote:
| > It is a very good idea that you read a book about mnemonics
|
| Do you have any particular books in mind? Thanks!
| BeetleB wrote:
| Books by Harry Lorayne: The Memory Book is one of them.
| Another is How to Develop a Super Power Memory.
| ced wrote:
| Yeah, 40 new words / day is very manageable. I used my own
| word lists instead of Anki, but same concept. 1000 words is
| enough for basic interactions (1 month) and 3000 words is
| generally good enough for conversation that doesn't get into
| the vocabulary long tail (just 3 months!) In an immersion
| context + some grammar textbook, it makes language learning
| much faster than is generally assumed.
|
| Most people that feel they need a language class, but those
| are terrible for learning vocabulary. Vocab learning is best
| done solo.
| knuthsat wrote:
| There's a setting you can tweak allowing you to set smaller
| intervals like 1 3 7 15 30 minutes until card will be postponed
| for the next day. Takes a bit longer to learn a new card but it
| should work. I went from 30% forgotten on each session to
| 5-10%.
| pritovido wrote:
| PS: You also need to understand that everybody is different.
|
| I am incredible good remembering faces and facial expressions,
| very good remembering places. I see a place on a picture, I
| know where it is if I have traveled there.
|
| But I am very bad remembering sounds. So I never try to
| remember using sounds like other people do.
|
| You should learn about yourself, what are your strengths and
| use them. Buy different memory books and just try them like I
| did. Some techniques will work for you, some not.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| This is very interesting, personally, because I am horrible
| at recognizing faces, but hearing the sound of the voice, I
| can recognize the person.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Learning and memory is a complex thing. If you don't learn even
| after adjusting the interval, I think there is something else.
|
| Lack of motivation, some mental issue like depression,
| attention problem while learning. You can't learn stuff like
| you sweep a floor, tune out and just do the movements.
| farresito wrote:
| Anki sucks for language learning or general vocabulary
| adquisition compared to simply reading.
| tmountain wrote:
| I disagree. Lots of books have quite a few "hapax legomenon",
| or... words that only appear once. If you're trying to build
| long-tail vocab, Anki will make sure you get repeated
| exposure to words that occur infrequently in a particular
| text. One might argue that these words don't matter as much
| since they're less common, but once you've mastered all the
| common vocab in a language, building a broader vocabulary
| becomes more important.
| [deleted]
| farresito wrote:
| I don't disagree with you. Maybe I should have been more
| precise with the term 'language learning'. If you find
| yourself in the situation that you propose, I think you are
| already at native level in the target language. I'm mostly
| referring to those that try to go from zero to C1 or C2
| with it.
| josquindesprez wrote:
| My personal experience is that most people in the
| language learning community have trouble fitting SRS into
| their long term workflow because they don't stop to think
| much about the natural spacing of repetition they get in
| their other learning processes.
|
| The people that popularize things like Anki the hardest
| are those that built and stuck with their own systems
| from the start. That's more of a referendum on their
| personality type than on the utility of their way of
| using Anki.
|
| My hunch is that most people end up struggling because a
| lot of the most popular systems end up doing the exact
| opposite of spaced repetition once you consider the
| complete universe of foreign language input a learner is
| getting.
|
| I've found that for me, Anki works really well for the
| first 1000 words, letting me jumpstart early vocab while
| most of my other time is spent on basic grammar.
|
| For words 1000-5000 or 10000 in frequency, it's easy to
| get stuck in a trap I see a lot online: every time you
| encounter a new word, add it to Anki. This is a great way
| to burn out. You'll encounter most of these words with a
| natural spacing as you read native materials, if they're
| in the higher frequency bands. Doing reviews becomes
| excruciating, since you're losing the efficiency benefits
| of using the SRS unless you adjust review frequency based
| on the native input you consume (a good machine learning
| side project, perhaps?)
|
| I've had a lot more success using Anki for words off in
| the long tail that I wouldn't otherwise have a chance to
| remember.
| wenc wrote:
| That's a good insight -- long tail vocabulary.
| pelario wrote:
| Hi there.
|
| I'm also using Anki for Finish vocab, and it had helped me a
| lot. To the point it does feel like a super power.
|
| If you are going to use Anki, it's important to switch the
| knobs to adapt to what you are learning.
|
| I will share some of the things that have worked for me, for
| Finnish vocab:
|
| - Intervals for new cards (until they are considered
| 'learned'): 1 10 15 50 240. The 240 is critical for me: if I
| forgot it after 4 hours, it goes back to 1 again... if I got it
| after 4 hours, then it will have better chances in a couple of
| days. Of course this is personal, I have been tweaking those
| until something makes sense to me.
|
| - Lapese (when a known card is forgotten, and how to re-learn):
| 10 30 240. Again the 240 check.
|
| - Set an ammount of new cards and max reviews per day that does
| not make you feel misserable... there needs to be some joy on
| learning...
|
| If I may ask, are you just learning the vocab ? have you taken
| courses? Where are you getting the vocab from ?
| mantap wrote:
| Your memory is like a muscle. Most people don't use their
| memory very much in their daily lives and so their ability to
| remember things atrophies. You need to exercise it regularly.
|
| Memory is also a skill. People have all kinds of techniques to
| remember things more easily, for instance med students use a
| lot of mneumonics. The key is to make memories stronger by
| building associations. Memories that are islands die faster.
| Associations with places are especially strong, which is the
| genesis of the "memory palace" technique where you imagine a
| palace with rooms containing the things that you want to
| remember. But any association will do. For instance, when I'm
| learning a language I like to make up a little story for each
| word. Using your episodic memory is a great way to increase
| strength of memories.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I had a similar problem with Japanese. It was ok when I kept up
| with it every day, but at the default settings I was repeating
| so many cards so often that the time I spent running through
| the decks was becoming frustrating. I took a camping trip for a
| few days and came back to several hundred cards per deck
| waiting for me and it's been hard to get myself back into it.
| armatav wrote:
| In addition to the other comments - underlying health issues
| related to sleep (i.e. apnea) can destroy recall.
| nmca wrote:
| Has anyone got a solid anki deck for probability and linear
| algebra?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Decks other people wrote usually aren't useful. You need to
| make your own flash cards. It's painful, but it's much more
| useful.
| hikarudo wrote:
| I used to think so too. Then I read the research on this, and
| the evidence suggests the opposite of what you wrote: your
| time is better spent doing retrieval practice than creating
| your own cards.
|
| https://www.learningscientists.org/
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I'd strongly recommend making them yourself. Everyone
| understands these things differently, and ideally your cards
| will complement the structures already represented in your own
| mind. Ideally, a card will shine light on one tiny aspect of
| the model you already have in your mind; if you're using cards
| shaped around a different model, and you drop them into place
| around your own model, the lights may be at strange angles or
| highlighting big complex things.
| RMPR wrote:
| Can definitely relate, Anki started to make sense after I
| started creating my own cards. Not batch-creating mind you,
| but carefully crafting each one, and updating when necessary
| while reviewing.
| virissimo wrote:
| I definitely agree that SRS can reasonably be thought of as a
| learning superpower. I very much regret that I didn't start using
| Anki until college.
|
| To save my own kids from such a regret, I've created Boethius, a
| SRS web application for the classical liberal arts to augment our
| homeschool curriculum. It's now in public beta here:
| https://www.boethi.us/.
|
| Let me know what you think!
| baby wrote:
| I can't get used to Anki's UI. I've tried it many times and
| failed. It's sort of like org mode to me. Instead I use
| memrise.com
| digianarchist wrote:
| Anki's UI is really bad across all applications.
| noman-land wrote:
| Excuse me if this is dumb question but this is the second time
| I've downloaded AnkiDroid and... am I supposed to answer the
| questions in the app or just do it in my head and then click show
| answer. I don't see any buttons to answer the question or enter
| your answer in the app. I am dumb or is something not working
| right?
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Answer the question in your head, show the answer, and click
| the button corresponding to how easy it was. It's digital
| flashcards.
| noman-land wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| You can add cards with answerable fields, but after many
| thousands of reviews I think that simple front-back cards where
| you answer in your head are the most effective. The extra work
| to type out an answer is not worth the hassle at all.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| For those that would rather use an analog method, you can make a
| Leitner Box of flash cards, which, if you follow the schedule,
| works in a similar way as Anki. I find that writing the cards out
| by hand is the first step in memorizing them. See how to use one
| in this interactive comic:
|
| https://ncase.me/remember/
| krosaen wrote:
| I use Anki a few times a week. When I've used it for math (as I
| work my way through Gilbert Strang's book "Linear Algebra and its
| applications"), I add full problems that seemed to be key to the
| topic, or surprised me in some way. These take longer to review,
| but I find it's been really helpful. And once it sticks, I don't
| have to review it again for months.
|
| I also find it can be helpful to have a single card that prompts
| review of related definitions, for instance:
|
| "What are the four subspaces of a matrix A? What are their
| dimensions with respect to the rank r of A? What are they
| subspaces of? (Fundamental theorem of Linear Algebra part 1)"
|
| Remembering these things together is easier for me than breaking
| this down into multiple cards as one piece of this in isolation
| doesn't make as much sense as a part of the whole.
|
| This is all to say that I disagree with the author on the point
| that it's important to find ways to break up cards to be bite
| sized. Otherwise great post IMO!
| Smaug123 wrote:
| If it works for you, then go for it - just do keep an eye on
| it, and if it stops working then notice early!
| biophysboy wrote:
| I've been learning Japanese since the pandemic hit, and Anki has
| been an indispensible tool. One thing that is great about it is
| people have already created great decks of the most common
| vocabulary, complete with audio and images. I would imagine
| people have done this for comp sci as well.
| quantum_state wrote:
| Thought people have been using similar techniques all along since
| ages ago ... the post seemed to present it as something new ...
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Really? I may be the author, but I have been utterly unable to
| extract that meaning from... any of the text I wrote.
| jayflux wrote:
| Checkout https://github.com/jasonwilliams/anki if you want to
| send any markdown notes to Anki from VSCode
| tedmcory77 wrote:
| What anki desperately needs (to the point years ago I explored
| this), is out of app nudges. I know I know, lots of folks dont
| like nagware, but I've found that for recreational things
| sometimes life happens and I just forget to go back to certain
| decks. If it's not tied to a goal I never get back to it.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Just make sure you don't go full Duolingo...
|
| never go full Duolingo...
| JulianWasTaken wrote:
| At least on Android, it definitely has this.
|
| Settings > AnkiDroid > Notify when (X number of cards due,
| etc.)
| tedmcory77 wrote:
| Nice! I wasn't aware of this (but sadly wont be able to take
| advantage of it).
| pokemod97 wrote:
| The IOS app also has the ability to set a notification at a
| certain time.
| wenc wrote:
| Just wondering if anyone has tried combining Anki with
| handwriting for improved retention? (any personal experiments?)
|
| In language learning, memorizing words in a shallow way tends to
| not be as helpful as memorizing them in a sentence (shallow vs
| deep encoding). One can try to ankify sentences, but it's too
| easy to click on the green button and fool oneself that one has
| mastered the sentence. Anki works great for snippets of atomic
| knowledge but doesn't work as well for sequential/series
| knowledge like sentences.
|
| On the other hand, there's another method called the Gold List
| method which is a pen-and-paper based SRS system which requires
| writing out complete sentences and testing recall every 2 weeks
| or so. Pen-and-paper folks like it, but due to the limitations of
| paper, implementing a proper SRS is far too tedious.
|
| What if one were to use Anki for the SRS part, and handwrite the
| responses? Handwriting sounds tedious, but I wonder if it helps
| deepen the encoding? (by forcing reconstruction of the sentence,
| slowing one down enough to dwell on the form and grammar, as well
| as adding a physical element to the task)
| mrwebmaster wrote:
| I do, but not for language learning, but for mathematical
| proofs and logic proofs. Example "Prove that the dot product
| between 2 unit vectors is cos th".
| Smaug123 wrote:
| For me, this may be too big a card, for what it's worth
| (depending on how you define the dot product). If it's
| defined as "|a| |b| cos theta", then fine, but if it's
| defined as "sum(a_i b_i)", there's definite work involved for
| me.
| cs8o2rjohkpw wrote:
| Yes. I made an single page app exactly for that.
|
| WIP: Achenes: A small typing-only flashcard app
|
| https://gitlab.com/beryl/achenes/info
| codyb wrote:
| I've used Anki prior and always wished there was an easy way to
| inject a bit of randomness into it.
|
| For instance, you could have the idea of a "template" such as
|
| <Pronoun> <Tense of to go> <Place> and <Same Tense of to see> a
| <Noun>.
|
| A lot of times things probably would be a bit non sensical such
| as
|
| "They went to the bank and saw an apple."
|
| "She will go to the Eiffel Tower to see a motorboat."
|
| But I always thought it would really help me a lot more than
| the more rote aspects.
|
| Of course, then the spaced repetition might be less effective
| due to the variety of the same card, and it may be more like
| studying something new.
| IanCal wrote:
| I think you can embed JavaScript in a card so you could do
| this. You'd probably want something to help you create them
| though.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| What programs do people use for Anki? I've tried the usual
| suspects, and found them a little too tedious. What I'd love is:
| - seamless syncing of cards between my devices. - more thought
| into the engagement loop (ie getting me to not be lazy and
| actually do the work). - an easily searchable database with
| credible curated decks.
| hamolton wrote:
| Ankidroid syncs with Ankiweb just like Anki desktop does, and I
| like it because I can swipe right/left to say if I remember a
| card or not. The decks are on https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/
| although I wouldn't call that curated; the most used curated
| list is probably the sidebar of /r/medicalschoolanki. I am
| unaware of CS/higher math decks, though. Perhaps this is a
| decent list? https://github.com/MilesCranmer/anki_science
| codyb wrote:
| I think Anki's official app has those features? It was about 20
| bucks on iPhone and free on OS X I believe, not sure about
| other platforms.
|
| The thing that would always get me would be that I would make a
| card on the phone and forget to manually sync it or something
| and then make a card on the computer and have to resolve
| conflicts.
|
| They really just needed an "add all cards from all sources"
| feature since that was generally all I wanted.
| a-dub wrote:
| Tried anki in college, found that creating the cards took too
| much time and doing them was boring.
|
| What did work for me was really simple. A single 8 1/2 by 11
| double sided sheet of paper could usually fit everything I needed
| to memorize at one given time. I'd write out a cheat sheet (a
| very valuable exercise in condensing and distilling while
| reviewing) and then reproduce it from memory before and after bed
| three days in a row allowing a tapered amount of cheating/peeking
| (with the first few being pretty much all peeking). After three
| days, it was pretty much good as memorized.
| sah55 wrote:
| This is just memorization through brute repetition without the
| SRS optimization. Less efficient, and more time consuming.
| BeetleB wrote:
| That's a bit harsh. As someone who regularly uses flash
| cards, _creating_ them really is a bottleneck. It 's a lot
| quicker to handwrite something on a paper. It's not as
| effective, but it definitely is faster.
| a-dub wrote:
| i also find that spatial layout and a fixed sequence can
| help with recall. flash cards are supposed to improve on
| that, but for me, personally, the spatial component is
| helpful- especially when related concepts are near each
| other.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| and many years later?
|
| As I understand it the benefit is to have strong recall over
| longer than just an exam or university course; more like for an
| entire career stage.
|
| How far into your career are you, and how much of the material
| you learned in this way have you retained? Have you fairly
| tested the retention?
| a-dub wrote:
| like anything it's use it or lose it. memorization works for
| short term, continued application in different settings is
| what makes it stick.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Memorization works well in the long term if you use flash
| cards, which was the point of the question.
| fizixer wrote:
| > Anki as Learning Superpower
|
| If it's a superpower, it's at best a rote learning superpower.
|
| Can you use Anki to learn quantum field theory, and solve the
| lamb shift problem without looking at the existing solutions?
|
| Cut out the hyperbole please.
| hliyan wrote:
| There is definitely a component of familiarity in the feeling
| or mental state that we call "understanding" (which is why
| analogies help understanding: they explain a lesser known thing
| using a more familiar thing). The brain is a neural network and
| repeated learning inputs definitely help. It's an
| oversimplification to look at the brain as if it's a simple
| Turing machine.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Can you use Anki to learn quantum field theory,
|
| Can you learn quantum field theory if you have to keep looking
| up Schrodinger's equations, and all the EM equations?
| nabla9 wrote:
| Memory is important part of thinking.
|
| When you learn facts, they are easily accessible for thinking
| and the connections start forming even unconsciously.
|
| The idea that you can keep the facts in a book and the brain is
| just like CPU that processes them is wrong. You have to
| remember if you want to learn complex stuff like physics.
| HaoZeke wrote:
| Yeah, somehow there's always a lot of love for spaced
| repetition even though it doesn't help with comprehension. I
| believe re learning complicated topics is better than mugging
| up jargon.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Rote learning absolutely does help with comprehension. If you
| understand all of the words in
|
| " Tod mach's mir leicht, wenn du kommst vor deiner Zeit"
| reading it and understanding it is trivial. If you have to
| look up each word individually your comprehension will at
| best be enormously slowed. The same principle applies if what
| you're reading is a chemical formula, a logical proof or a
| description of a historical event. Knowing the 200 or so most
| important events of the French Revolution by date with two
| sentences of explanation for context makes reading further on
| it enormously more productive.
| HaoZeke wrote:
| Probably for languages, but even still I would assert
| memorizing a dictionary is less informative than reading 50
| books.
| sn9 wrote:
| No one memorizes dictionaries for language learning.
|
| There are frequency lists of vocabulary words for
| languages: basically some words are used more frequently
| than others so memorizing the most common 1000-3000 words
| is enough to get very high comprehension rates for
| everyday conversation and reading.
|
| https://blog.fluent-forever.com/vocabulary/
| flamble wrote:
| If you use vocab flashcards that contain an example
| sentence or two showing usage in context, then it is more
| efficient than reading a book (with regard to the
| language rather than the book's actual content).
| Personally, I read books and when I encounter an
| unfamiliar word, I add it to the flashcard pile, ensuring
| that I don't forget the new knowledge.
|
| If you're trying to learn the content of the book, the
| process of converting the information into flashcards
| entails engaging with the material, so that isn't
| skipped.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I think there's a false dichotomy here. Memorising a
| dictionary is _easy_ , because memorisation is a choice
| (with spaced repetition). Reading a book in an unfamiliar
| language takes lots of time and mental effort. Both will
| contribute to your understanding of the language; perhaps
| memorising a dictionary contributes less, but then
| there's a lower activation energy involved in it too:
| whenever you have five minutes spare, you can just sit
| down and learn a couple of cards.
| HaoZeke wrote:
| Thanks! I guess I never really thought of going over
| cards in spare time. In retrospect, that might be why I
| never got into them. I only used them when I had a lot of
| time to dedicated towards learning the material anyway
| and then I preferred reading.
| Rainymood wrote:
| Perhaps an interesting article for you: Augmenting Long-Term
| Memory [1] by QUANTUM PHYSICIST Michael Nielson (emphasis mine)
|
| [1] http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
| qznc wrote:
| And his website which teaches quantum computing with spaced
| repetition: https://quantum.country/
| Smaug123 wrote:
| (Author here.)
|
| Learning has many components. Even on its own, brute
| memorisation is a powerful tool. But see e.g. SuperMemo's
| creator on Incremental Reading
| (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading) for a more
| generalised view of how to use spaced repetition for what you
| might refer to as "actual" understanding.
| crumbshot wrote:
| I tried using Anki but found it far too boring to sustain my
| interest. Staring at fact flashcards for hours on end just felt
| like a waste of time.
|
| In my experience it was much more useful and engaging to learn by
| doing things (creating, writing, experimenting) that the facts
| were related to - then the most necessary facts would become
| deeply embedded in my memory, with others at just the right level
| of vagueness necessary to look up the details if needed.
| colordrops wrote:
| Someone should just create an open source clone of Duo Lingo
| that can utilize user created content . It's basically anki
| with much more engaging visuals, game-ficication, and social
| aspects, and it works really well to keep users engaged both
| per session and long term.
| ngokevin wrote:
| I'm doing a more social language learning app, starting with
| helping couples learn languages from each other. So it's like
| multiplayer Duolingo + Anki. Won't be open source, but I plan
| on an API with import / exports from Anki
| https://learncoupling.com
| vslira wrote:
| > Staring at fact flashcards for hours on end just felt like a
| waste of time.
|
| I think I found your problem.
|
| Try this cycle: - Add however many cards you like - Study - Got
| bored and didn't finish all your cards? Stop and don't add any
| new card until you can finish quick enough to not get bored -
| Finishing quickly? Add more cards
|
| The exponentially increasing interval is your friend. Before
| you notice you won't be studying more than 10 cards a day :)
|
| It doesn't feel like it in the first ~10 days of a block of
| cards, but there's a jitter in the spacing function, so you
| will see the same block at the same time 2 or 3 times but then
| they'll start dispersing and be a lot less overwhelming.
|
| And most important of all: don't be afraid of slow progress:
| progress is progress!
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I remember seeing people using flash cards in various science
| and math classes. The only thing that helped me to remember
| algos and derivations was to use them on some practical
| problem. I am as much as kinesthetic as visual learner, I
| think mainly because it keeps my brain from going into zombie
| repetition land. Don't even try to teach me something by just
| babbling about it in front of a class room. I need to
| experience the learning in some fashion. When all that fails
| I'll fall back on rote memorization and flash cards. I can
| definitely see its place in learning foreign languages (at
| least at the start, I always did better by using the words in
| sentences that forced me to think about them more than just
| as a jumble of letters)
| BeetleB wrote:
| A cardinal rule of all SRS advocates: You must understand
| something before making a flashcard for it. In math, that
| means solving problems with it, etc.
|
| I learned analysis a long time ago. Forgot most of it,
| despite applying it a lot.
|
| I learned statistics _twice_ , applied it, and still forgot
| most of it. The third time round I made flashcards and I
| haven't forgotten much.
|
| I studied a textbook on floating point arithmetic for work
| (mathematical - with theorems, etc). Because it was
| secondary to my main work, I would have gaps - sometimes
| for months, before I could return to it. Yet whenever I did
| return to it, I could continue where I left off without
| reviewing much - because of flash cards.
|
| Memory is useful.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| This is true for most people; almost nobody is going to get
| a good understanding of something just by reading about it.
| But if you _have_ already understood something, then Anki
| can help you solidify that understanding into the long
| term.
| leppr wrote:
| Actually for language learning at least, understanding
| doesn't need to come before rote memorization.
|
| While "stupidly" learning a one-two word definition might
| not allow you to understand how a word is actually used,
| it will allow you to get its meaning should you encounter
| it in native material, delaying understanding to that
| moment.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Staring at fact flashcards for hours on end just felt like a
| waste of time._
|
| Why would you need to "stare at fact flashcards for hours on
| end"?
|
| The whole idea is the opposite, to minimize learning time, and
| only stare at a flashcard periodically at the time when it
| makes more sense.
| rasen58 wrote:
| This happens quite a lot when using Anki where you have to
| start doing it for hours. If you stop doing for weeks, and
| then try to come back, there are so many cards piled up that
| it would take so long to go through that you just don't feel
| like doing it anymore.
|
| How would you solve this?
| jldugger wrote:
| Get up and walk away, come back tomorrow. There are
| settings for maximum reviews per day, if you need
| assistance in doing this. The good news is that the longer
| you go between reviews and get the card right, the further
| out it will be until the next review.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Timebox it. Use no more than 'x' minutes per day on Anki;
| unless you're adding more cards than you are remembering,
| you'll catch up.
| cehrlich wrote:
| I've been using Anki to learn Japanese for about a year
| now, quite successfully.
|
| The largest factor determining your daily reviews is your
| daily new cards - it depends on retention somewhat, but in
| general daily reviews after a few months stabilize at
| around 10x daily new cards.
|
| So the best way to use Anki is to limit your daily new
| cards to an amount where you can easily handle the reviews.
| And yeah, you basically can't take a day off ever.
|
| Anki is very powerful, but you also need to structure your
| learning/routine around it somewhat, or maybe another way
| to look at it is that you need to make Anki work for you. I
| currently spend about 15-20 minutes a day on Anki, earlier
| on in my language learning it was over an hour a day.
| nullsense wrote:
| Fun fact: when learning Japanese a decade ago I did 35
| new cards a day for 2 years. I hit 400 reviews a day and
| review sessions were several hours.
|
| One day I just stopped and deleted it all.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| How's your Japanese now?
| nefitty wrote:
| Categorize your cards, and when you come back focus on the
| categories you want to work on. I think Anki allows
| tagging. I use Memrise and it allows you to split courses
| into different "chapters", which all share the same course
| database. In fact, it allows you to pull in data from all
| existing public Memrise databases.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I think this sounds symptomatic of having made flashcards
| which are too big. There was a time when I discovered this
| failure mode big-time: I basically burnt out of flashcarding,
| because my cards were all much too big.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I believe anki was originally devised for foreign language
| learning
| agd wrote:
| I think to make the most of it you need to engage your
| imagination. Relating stories and context to the facts
| transforms it from 'staring at flashcards for hours' into more
| of a game and something to enjoy.
|
| And the great thing is, because of the spaced repetition, you
| don't need to spend hours on it at a time. You can learn a lot
| in 5/10 mins a day.
| leppr wrote:
| When I was starting Anki, I would spend time really focusing
| my thinking on the cards while reviewing them (reading
| sentences aloud multiple times until pronunciation is good,
| relating concepts to others, ...). I'm now convinced this is
| a waste of time and Anki is best used rushing through
| sessions as fast as possible (maximum 20min a day). This
| takes care of the small, boring but often essential rote
| memorization part, allowing you to use as much of your time
| and intellect for actual practice in the target domains.
|
| (This may not apply if the target domain is actually itself
| rote memorization, e.g. medical exams)
| BeetleB wrote:
| 20 min a day is still a _lot_ - unless it 's mostly due to
| adding a lot of cards per day.
| tomcatfish wrote:
| For context in this thread, my maximum study in the last
| 2 months was 10.42 minutes, but my mode (and average as
| well, that point is an outlier) is close to 3 or 4
| wildpeaks wrote:
| This is exactly why I still lament the loss of my favorite
| language learning app: "Cat Academy"
| (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/catacademy)
|
| It was using flashcards of cats with funny captions and it
| actually worked. Sadly my old phone eventually broken and the
| app can't be installed from the appstore anymore.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Have you tried fluent forever? their app uses a similar
| concept except you pick your own photos to help you
| remember. I finally found a use for many of the random
| photos of my dogs I've been saving in my phone for years!
| snazz wrote:
| It really depends on what you're doing. Anki is the perfect
| tool for memorizing vocabulary in a new language, but it's not
| a replacement for practicing your writing or other creative
| endeavors. Each technique has its place.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Well, Anki isn't meant to be used on its own. You are supposed
| to be doing those other things and Anki assists. Like if you
| were using it in a college chemistry course you'd have numerous
| facts in Anki, but still doing labs and other homework and
| things to exercise the knowledge. Anki itself is meant to help
| you remember better, but other things are needed to fully
| exercise that knowledge in appropriate contexts.
|
| I use it with Spanish, but without conversations with my wife
| and others or trying to read Spanish language content it would
| be a useless exercise on its own.
| ngokevin wrote:
| Hey! I'm building an app for couples to learn languages from
| each other. I started building it because I've been learning
| Chinese with my wife, but mostly alone with Anki, so I wanted
| to make it more multiplayer.
|
| The app has an Anki-like backend, and augments the flashcards
| with guidance, feedback, and challenges with your wife.
| https://learncoupling.com
| wendyshu wrote:
| Indeed. I see the value of Anki for rote memorization, e.g.
| studying for a fact-based exam. But for more reasoning-based
| domains I'm skeptical.
| realjohng wrote:
| Wish I had used this when I was student learning history or
| biology or even cs algo run times!
| galfarragem wrote:
| I have mixed feelings on Anki:
|
| - It worked great to memorize cyrillic alphabet.
|
| - It's working not so well to memorize Polish words (I have
| around 500 in a custom-made deck). Reading Polish news simply
| works better for me but I don't know why.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Application of knowledge frequently (e.g. reading Polish news
| regularly) works on somewhat the same principle as Anki
| (repeated exposure is the key), but is likely a bit better as
| its more interesting and with context.
| semicolonandson wrote:
| I went rather deep into ankification of computer science - 5500
| cards deep. I've written up my experiences as a series of
| articles here for anyone interested
|
| https://www.jackkinsella.ie/articles/janki-method
| nefitty wrote:
| I've used it for API's and syntax. For example, I have an
| entire GraphQL course turned into flashcards. I used screencaps
| of code so that it wouldn't lose formatting.
| yeutterg wrote:
| Hey Jack, I've always found your Anki guides to be some of the
| best. I'm curious, are you still using it all these years
| later?
| semicolonandson wrote:
| As someone who is now over a decade into their programming
| career, today I find more value in doing analytical
| breakdowns of my various success and mistakes. What were my
| oversights on a project? How could I have communicated
| better? What made one particular library a success, etc.?
|
| Therefore, after years of Anki, I've stopped adding new cards
| and doing repetition; instead I now focus on keeping a code
| diary. I've published the first couple of hundred entries
| here so you can see what this entails:
|
| https://www.semicolonandsons.com/code_diary
|
| I see the relationship between my days of ankifying tidbits
| of knowledge and my current diarying as one of tactics vs.
| strategy. The Anki-stage was necessary to drill the basics.
| But now, a decade later, the focus is on the bigger picture
| -- and trying to capture this bigger picture onto a double-
| sided flashcard is about as fruitful as trying to contain an
| ocean in a bathtub.
| ochronus wrote:
| I'm new to this method, earlier (much earlier) I dismissed it as
| something silly (I know, I know...) - what are your favorite
| decks?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Isn't Anki good only for memorization? Spaced repetition doesn't
| seem to help learning how something relates to another logically
| like how to determine when to use what programming patterns.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| It can help. In the article, I recommend Nielsen "Seeing
| through a piece of mathematics", which is about _exactly_ this.
| http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
| sn9 wrote:
| Yes you don't use Anki for understanding.
|
| First you understand something, then you convert that
| understanding into flashcards so it sticks in your long-term
| memory.
| TheTrotters wrote:
| It's great for math, for example.
|
| It's spacing + testing effect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect
|
| Suppose you can solve some problem or prove some theorem today.
| Then you try to do it again next week, next month and so on.
| It's very different from rote memorization.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Spaced repetition doesn't seem to help learning how something
| relates to another logically like how to determine when to use
| what programming patterns.
|
| You can make cards for those.
|
| Of course, if you're making cards on those without
| understanding and internalizing, the cards won't help you.
| milansm wrote:
| Back at the uni days if I struggled to understand a math
| concept, proof or algo, I would just memorize it. After a while
| the understanding part would also come.
| ratsimihah wrote:
| I think Anki helps build the necessary knowledge base to make
| such connections, but actually making those connections comes
| with putting that knowledge into practice.
| pushpendra7 wrote:
| Rqr1qqqqqeeeeee
| prox wrote:
| Hi cat! Stop walking on the keyboard!
| maxdarapper wrote:
| Anki is good, but the problems that I had with it was that I was
| not learning the flashcards well enough on the first day to to
| recall those flashcards on subsequent days and it took too long
| to make flashcards, so I made myself a flashcards app.
| http://flashcardmax.com/download
| shoaib1 wrote:
| hello
| CoffeePython wrote:
| Seems to be a lot of interest in this space.
|
| I'm trying to combine the "rote-ness" of anki with learning by
| doing.
|
| In Deliberate Python[1] I'm combining spaced repetition lessons
| with small exercises that encourage you to really focus and get
| the question right the first time.
|
| The encouragement to get it right the first time, as often as
| possible, is something I learned from learning music. Practice
| makes permanent
|
| [1] https://www.sendfox.com/deliberatepython Note: this project
| is pre launch so this is a newsletter where I'm giving progress
| updates. Plan to launch into beta in a month or two
| amelius wrote:
| Anki is missing a button: "I don't care".
|
| For example, I don't care if for the question "In ruby, how do I
| get the previous regex match" the answer is "$&". If I ever need
| it, I'll just look it up.
| khamba wrote:
| A sibling comment suggests deleting the card, but I personally
| like to use the suspend feature.
| d33 wrote:
| You can just flag those cards and remove them from your deck.
| It's all about having it personalized.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| If you don't care, don't add it to your deck.
|
| What's that you say? You downloaded premade decks? Don't do
| that! Constructing your deck yourself is an important part of
| the learning process.
| bhrgunatha wrote:
| I use anki to document and remember all my emacs custom key-
| bindings. That might sound silly but it's easy to accumulate
| useful things over the years in emacs and forget about them.
|
| Emacs is vast and deep and there's a lot to learn and
| remember.
|
| It also serves the same purpose for key-bindings and
| functions in various modes and packages.
| amelius wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier if you could just pop up a help
| screen with a good search option whenever you needed to
| know a certain key combination?
| DavidSJ wrote:
| apropos-documentation (C-h d) and apropos-command (C-h a)
| provide some such functionality.
|
| You could also try searching for "apropos" with apropos-
| command to find other related commands.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Ha! I used flashcards to memorize a fair number of Emacs
| shortcuts.
|
| It's not always that easy to find - even with C-h a or
| C-h m, etc.
|
| But the bigger benefit is even knowing that feature X
| exists and there is a key combination for it. I found
| flash cards useful because I would get an occasional
| "reminder" that X exists and I should use it more often!
|
| A trivial example: flush-lines and keep-lines. I never
| knew these existed till I read them somewhere. I put it
| in my flashcards, and over time I would remember its
| existence and use it more and more.
| jayflux wrote:
| > That might sound silly
|
| That's not silly at all, a lot of people use Anki for
| things like that. I've seen a couple of premade decks but I
| would avoid these.
|
| When it comes to keybindings its better to make your own
| deck otherwise you end up learning a load of bindings
| you'll never use. I like to add them as and when I need
| them.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| (Author here.)
|
| Seconded on all counts! Ruthlessly delete cards you don't
| care about; make your own cards so that they reflect your own
| mental structures. In the article, I allude to this by
| talking about how people can undergo very different mental
| motions to obtain the same "serialised" fact like "78% of the
| air is nitrogen".
| wenc wrote:
| Deleting is often recommended but it's an irreversible
| operation.
|
| Suspending on the other hand, takes the card out of
| rotation, and if at some future point one cares about the
| card again, it is easy to unsuspend.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| That button is called delete.
| wendyshu wrote:
| What's the point of memorizing a bunch of facts you could easily
| look up on the web?
| BeetleB wrote:
| It's common for me to read something, and forgot it even
| existed. I can't look it up unless I know it exists. With flash
| cards, I am reminded that it exists every once in a while.
|
| As an example, here's a simple card: What is the recommended
| way to traverse all the files (including subdirectories) in
| Python?
|
| Answer: scandir and _not_ os.walk
|
| os.walk is my standard goto. Then I learned about scandir, but
| kept forgetting that there was a better alternative to os.walk.
| So I made a card for it.
|
| The other answer, of course, is speed. If I'm going to Google
| "what is the alternative to os.walk?" or something similar
| every time I need it, it adds a lot of friction and I simply
| won't bother. And no, I don't do this often enough that looking
| it up each time will force it to become ingrained.
|
| And frankly, when you do math/physics, you do need a number of
| concepts in your head. Solving a complex problem requires
| multiple parts/stages, and solving requires you to have them in
| your head so you can put them together. My biggest mistake when
| I was in grad school was thinking I could get by _without_
| memorizing. It worked fine for undergrad level math, but it was
| a real problem when I took higher level courses. The professors
| were split on whether memorizing is a good idea, but the fact
| is the professors used this stuff a lot more than I did.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Thanks for providing these details.
|
| For your Python example I'd just use a snippet. On the other
| hand, Google's pretty fast and always updated.
|
| It's all a personal trade-off I guess. I wouldn't say it's
| common for me to forget I knew something. But maybe the cost
| of creating, maintaining, and reviewing card decks is worth
| it for you.
| BeetleB wrote:
| What use is a snippet if I forget it exists and that there
| is a better way?
| wendyshu wrote:
| You'd probably remember a snippet if you made it. If not,
| there's autocomplete.
| dieortin wrote:
| I guess people shouldn't study history anymore when they can
| just look up things on the web
| wendyshu wrote:
| There's more to learning history than memorizing facts.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Competency and efficiency.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| If the facts are in your head, you can make a connection
| between them. If they are in different places on the web,
| unless someone else already linked them for you, they remain
| separate.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Can you give an example?
| waxachasee wrote:
| Anki is used a lot in medical education. There's a lot of
| small details, and you can string them along to form the
| big picture. An example is going from symptoms -> diagnosis
| -> treatment options -> drug side effects. You can't just
| memorize use drug X for Y, but you incorporate information
| that you know to formulate the best plan. Suppose the
| patient has kidney disease - you've memorized X is
| nephrotoxic so you find another treatment.
|
| I will say this is easier for some and harder for others.
| I've noticed some people have a lot of difficulty recalling
| facts without a specific cue when using Anki. It's best
| used with traditional learning, but you can focus more on
| the why.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Sure there's a lot of memorization in medical school but
| I'm more interested in computer science, the context of
| the article.
| tomlue wrote:
| Unknown unknowns. Knowledge availability is another big one.
|
| I used Anki to learn molecular biology. I work in
| bioinformatics and understanding molecular pathways means I can
| more fluently build hypotheses with colleagues. Without having
| memorized these pathways, unknowns unknowns and lack of
| knowledge availability would prevent a lot of discovery.
| quicklime wrote:
| Because it helps you quickly connect those facts together into
| a larger idea later.
| ablekh wrote:
| I have just installed Anki on my Windows 10 computer and was
| disappointed to find that it has no ability to scale the
| application's UI or, better yet, configure font size (and, maybe
| even font family) on a per-component basis. If any Anki
| developers are reading this thread, please consider this comment
| as a relevant feature request.
| [deleted]
| moralsupply wrote:
| Is there a software less clunky than Anki out there with similar
| functionality?
| ricg wrote:
| Shameless plug: I make an SRS app called Flashcard Hero[1]
| (iOS/macOS/Windows).
|
| I strive to keep the app as easy to use as possible.
|
| [1]: http://flashcardhero.com
| allenu wrote:
| I'm actually about to release my own SRS-based flash card app
| in a few days if you can wait a little bit. [1] I'm just
| putting the finishing touches on it and will release to macOS
| and iOS.
|
| I think Anki is a great tool, but I think there are so many
| aspects of it that can be improved, so I decided to write my
| own app.
|
| I'm hoping to refine the SRS algorithm, lesson UI, and card
| layout over time as I get input from folks about what works and
| what doesn't. I think there's a lot of potential for
| improvement in this space if someone devotes some time to it.
|
| 1. https://www.ussherpress.com/freshcards/
| divan wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, it looks great from the start.
|
| Is iOS/MacOS only? Any chance it's going to be open-sourced?
| allenu wrote:
| Thanks! If there's enough interest, I'd love to look into
| Android or Windows one day.
|
| I don't have plans of open-sourcing this.
| [deleted]
| wenc wrote:
| Quizlet has a vastly better UI but they quietly removed the SRS
| functionality for some reason.
| prox wrote:
| What's the program of anki they use? Somehow none of the links
| mention that.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Anki _is_ a program. The first link in the entire article is to
| https://apps.ankiweb.net.
| prox wrote:
| Gotcha! Thanks!
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| I used Anki to pass my GRE Verbal Test back in the day. Haven't
| really used it since then.
| sone3d wrote:
| An iOS Anki alternative app? The official costs 27,99EUR and I
| would give it a shot if not for the high price.
| clockman wrote:
| I use anki with org-noter and the anki-editor minor mode for
| digesting PDFs, a sort of hacked version of incremental reading.
| I just stuff entire definitions and proofs into it and use cloze
| deletions for almost everything, then I attach a bunch of
| screenshots from the source material in the "Extra" field for any
| context when/if I fail the card. That, combined with the load
| balancer plugin and a limit of 5 new cards per day keeps my daily
| reviews around 1 hour. I have 18,000 cards. I'm familiar with the
| 20 rules for formulating knowledge but I just don't care to break
| things down into atoms. So I cloze and forget.
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| I've completed my Bachelor of Computer Science in just 3 months
| thanks to deliberate practice and memorization techniques
| (flashcards, Anki).
|
| It shows how outdated our education system is and how much better
| it could be.
| jkmcf wrote:
| Pro tip: review flash cards while taking a bio break instead of
| social media, etc.
| Jabbles wrote:
| I have used Anki productively, I think it's a great tool, and
| should be a component of learning in many fields.
|
| But I can't help but think it could be a lot better, a lot more
| efficient, perhaps even 2x more. Anki allows you to customise
| many aspects of when cards are shown. But presumably those
| settings can be tuned for a individual, a subject, or even a
| card. One person probably doesn't have enough data to know what
| would be most efficient, so they guess, or stay with the
| defaults.
|
| Part of this is due to the lack of data - and the privacy
| concerns that would accompany Anki harvesting it all and feeding
| it to a machine learning system. But if an SRS system were
| recommended by and developed by a national curriculum, I suspect
| it could be a lot cleverer and more efficient.
|
| As one example, consider if you had to learn the translations of
| 2 words. And students often got them confused. Then perhaps
| getting one wrong should also prompt a test of the other, or
| indeed maybe it should delay the test of the other? Who knows...
| patresh wrote:
| I agree with your comment. As a sidenote concerning your last
| point, Gabriel Wyner's book "Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any
| Language Fast and Never Forget It" explains in detail how to
| build an SRS system to learn a language and it strongly advises
| against using translation tasks in your SRS.
|
| Instead of thinking in the target language, your mind will
| create strong associations with the words in your original
| language and make it difficult to think in the target language
| by always having to refer to the original language. A better
| task design would be receiving images and coming up with the
| word in the target language.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| These types of HN posts are so valuable to me.
|
| I'm writing my own knowledge base / SRS system and i'd like
| to start from a mostly fresh dog-food-esque approach. I want
| to try and record information in such a way that it has the
| meat of that byte of memory, but pair it with something that
| could be used to trigger that memory-byte - like your image
| example.
|
| In the end i'm sure it won't be a revolution, but
| nevertheless i'm hoping to find ways to bridge knowledge
| store & retention (ala SRS/etc).
|
| I'm also quite interested in areas of learning. Eg i
| expect/desire to store far more information than i can
| retain. So i want a system that can help me move areas of
| knowledge based on my ability _(or time availability)_ to
| retain.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| When I was younger I bought a learn Mandarin book of which at
| least half was stickers to put on objects around the house,
| it was surprisingly effective, because every time I opened
| the fridge for example, I would see the characters and pinyin
| and say the word aloud.
| marta_morena_28 wrote:
| Yeah that works for the first 1000 words perhaps. Then you
| run out of images to show. Many of the more complicated words
| simply can't be disambiguated by images.
|
| Learning words by translation is totally fine. The point is
| not to use this as your ONLY learning method. You use it to
| SEED words. Once you know like 5000 words, you will be able
| to read books and also look up words in same-language
| dictionaries. But still learning more words with translation
| still should work well as long as you get 90% or so of your
| language exposure without translation. Learning words is just
| a tiny part of the task.
| patresh wrote:
| Learning words by translation is fine but what the book
| argues is that it's very inefficient, because you seed them
| with respect to your original language so you build a habit
| of going back and forth between the languages when trying
| to come up with a word instead of staying immersed.
|
| The advantage of images is first of all that visual cues
| are very powerful for memory, the more senses you associate
| with a memory the stronger it will be (I wonder if anyone
| has ever tried to incorporate smells into SRS?).
| Furthermore, it is not always easy to find a decent image
| but the mere search for this image will make your brain
| work with that word in mind and create associations.
|
| Granted, it is not easy to find images for words such as
| "philosophy" but with a bit of creativity it is possible
| and if not, it's always possible to explain the target word
| in the target language to stay immersed.
| asdasdasdas5453 wrote:
| I tried to define Japanese words from the ground up
| starting using emojis and then using the word already
| defined to define more complex words.
|
| https://drdru.github.io/stories/intro.html
|
| It is doable. There is a book called Lingua Latina per se
| Illustrata that does it for Latin. I have to admit that
| it has some limits. At some point you want to go back to
| using your mother tongue. English is not my first
| language. I live in the UK everything I read is in
| English. There are some words I have seen a thousand
| times and I sort of know what they mean but they become
| mine only after I look up for their translation.
| kiba wrote:
| Coming up with images for the target language can be a very
| difficult task, since much of our understanding are verbal
| only, as opposed to conceptual and images based.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| This is a great idea. Thanks for sharing.
|
| Just to restate what you said, adding nothing. Imagine you had
| Anki for a similar cohort studying a coherent single course.
| You'll be able to get a sense of what topics confuse everyone
| and what correlation there are in confusion. If you had trouble
| with X, then you need extra guidance on A & B.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I'm a teacher. There is a great deal to the profession that
| does depend on experience, intuition and relationship
| building; however, better data on what - exactly - my
| students know/can do would be a great boon. I believe better
| assessment tools are the key here, but SRS system data would
| be another useful channel (and does, of course, have an
| assessment component to it).
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| What level of granularity do you think about "what the
| students know?"
|
| do problems, say in math, map to concepts? students don't
| know concepts? Or is it more subtle?
| allenu wrote:
| I agree that there could be so much more to how cards are
| reviewed. For instance, what if some cards were made dependent
| on other cards? You could have some cards that have basic
| vocabulary and then another set of cards that use that
| vocabulary in sentences.
|
| There's no point in learning the sentences if you haven't
| sufficiently mastered the vocabulary, so what if the app showed
| you the sentence cards only if it has determined that you've
| learned the word cards sufficiently?
| [deleted]
| divan wrote:
| So much this.
|
| I use Anki for more than a decade, and every single time there
| is a touch of frustration that Anki UX stuck in mid-2000.
|
| Another super annoying feature is that historically Anki is
| free except iOS - somehow mentality of "iOS users are rich"
| sneaked in - and Anki for iOS costs ~25$. This makes it
| prohibitively hard to recommend Anki to non-Android users,
| especially to younger generation which virtually don't use
| desktops, type much faster on mobile rather then PC keyboard,
| etc.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| The android app is a FOSS community effort, while the iOS app
| is first-party. There is no double standard here, if anything
| Android users are the ones which are disadvantaged by the
| Anki developers.
| kixiQu wrote:
| It costs money to publish an iOS app in a way that it does
| not for Android. In addition, the Android app was able to
| leverage the fact that Anki's desktop app is written in Java.
| It has nothing to do with an idea that "iOS users are rich".
| It is easy to recommend Ankiweb instead since it works well
| enough for mobile.
|
| (I also question whether there are really a significant
| number of people who type -- at least Latin characters --
| faster on mobile than a PC keyboard, but that's a digression)
| nullsense wrote:
| I thought the desktop app was written in Python?
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| >somehow mentality of "iOS users are rich" sneaked in
|
| This is just not true. The android app is an open source
| project by the community, whereas the iOS app is made by the
| original developer of anki.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Please don't equate UX to a particular era. UX is _how a
| thing works_. That is a timeless quality.
|
| Anki UX just sucks. I agree. Even if it were year 2000, its
| UX is not great.
| dmerks wrote:
| How could it easily be better?
| vinay427 wrote:
| I think they may have meant UI, at least more than UX. The
| visuals of the interface feel like they're from about a
| decade ago, and while I don't really mind this on my
| minimal Linux desktop environment because it's at least
| clearly laid out, it's a little aesthetically out-of-place
| on some other systems.
| armatav wrote:
| It's a one-time $25 cost. It is also entirely worth it.
|
| iOS users spend an order of magnitude more money than Android
| users, so that was the creator's logic - use them as the
| "whales".
|
| It's 100% fine and honestly he should be charging a
| subscription for such a great app, on every platform.
| hpfr wrote:
| As a desktop and iOS user (and a member of a younger
| generation), this doesn't bother me too much, to be honest.
| Free software projects might as well take advantage of closed
| distribution platforms as a revenue source when they're the
| only option for distribution, in my opinion. That said, $25
| is on the high side, but is that really prohibitive, even for
| students, or has the history of ingrained low price
| expectations in the mobile app ecosystem made us more shocked
| than we should be at a $25 one-time fee? People certainly
| frequently pay more for subscriptions now.
|
| Regardless of the reason behind it, you're right, it is
| admittedly hard to convince a large portion of iOS users that
| $25 for an app is worth it, which is unfortunate for Anki.
| But I don't know if a free version would be worth the trade-
| offs.
| knuthsat wrote:
| It's a SRS without context. You could probably put contextual
| bandits somewhere in the loop and optimize for the individual.
|
| I found it very disappointing when Duolingo released their
| paper on optimizing their global SRS on data they collected
| from the users. There was no context, only curve fitting for a
| better multipler of fail and success.
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