Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

by bcg361 • 2 years ago

540 429 2 years ago

apps.ankiweb.net

gcr• 2 years ago

I LOVE anki!! I’m a heavy user.

Everything goes in my morning flash cards. Knots, geography, language, tar commandline flags, papers, statistics homework. Fill them with things you like, is my advice - it’s fun to say hello to hobbies on the verge of your memory in the morning.

Bird calls! I’m learning sounds of bird calls since I can’t see very well so I can’t learn by sight. I listed eBird’s set of common birds near me and downloaded their calls as mp3s from the Macaulay Library and batch-imported them into my flash cards (for my personal use). It’s always rewarding to hear a bird outside and go “hey I think I know what that is!” Pairs well with Merlin Sound ID.

Another great use is as a mnemonic Rolodex: I frequently forget to reach out and catch up with friends in my life, so I have a deck with just names of people to say hi to. Every time somebody comes up, I say hello, and then answer the card for whichever interval feels appropriate. This way, the SRS itself will make sure that I never forget someone for too long.

Arisaka12• 2 years ago

Wait a moment. "tar commandline flags"? When I was still learning how to program, the general advice was to avoid memorizing things you can easily look up, like language syntax, framework functionality or commandline flags, and just let it happen. In fact, I recently caught myself skimming Nest.js docs to make cards to learn how to use Nest.js BEFORE I even start working on my project, and almost felt like I'm procrastinating instead of being productive.

I don't disagree with how Anki is effective at memorization, because that would be like disagreeing with the effectiveness of space repetition as a principle. I'm just wondering if it's worth putting stuff like "vim keybinds" in - John Carmack reportedly did that to check what's the fuss about Vim.

jpalomaki• 2 years ago

At least for me this often means, that I just keep on lookin up the stuff over and over again. Takes some deliberate effort to actually store some obscure things in my memory.

When I was still active with Anki, I was mostly picking up some random things I knew I would need fairly often and included those in my deck.

alabhyajindal3• 2 years ago

He should have used Vim instead of memorizing it's keybindings. That makes no sense at all.

dustincoates2• 2 years ago

Bird calls is a great idea! I never thought of it, but it really does align with the medium.

AstroJetson• 2 years ago

Where did you find a decent flash cards about knots?

grep_name• 2 years ago

As someone who has a had some false starts with SRS, this seems like an interesting approach. Do you add all these disparate topics into one huge deck? What does adding a new topic domain look like?

I think a bit of the problem (for me) when I tried anki before was friction from the overhead of 1.) deciding how to split time among decks and 2.) having to assign a 1-5 value for 'how well I remembered the info'. That second point is huge, I find that kind of task to be incredibly exhausting. Do you have any tips for getting over that?

jan_Inkepa2• 2 years ago

Every few years I use Anki heavily for language stuff (German, more recently Latin and Classical Chinese), up to 90 minutes a day, but I can never keep the workload under control, or my habits change, and give it up.

I still benefit from a year of training, but it seems the long-tail of spaced repetition doesn't work for me at all. But so long as I get to the point where I can read or watch TV, the considerable effort I've invested in making cards (not to mention reviewing them) was worthwhile.

It's also fun to have an extended/time-intensive personal task where it can be worth it to build up a highly personalised system that doesn't need to work for anyone else. It allows for a selfishness that's the polar opposite of accessibility design, but can end up resulting in quite novel/pleasing design decisions. (There've been some other posts about making software just for yourself on hacker news before).

They have a lot of shared decks hosted online, but I guess for hosting costs or copyright reasons delete any decks that aren't regularly downloaded, which results in many niche decks getting deleted. I've uploaded several German-language decks that get deleted because of course they don't get the same traffic as English ones. Bit of a pity - I wonder what the ecosystem would look like if things were otherwise.

kashunstva2• 2 years ago

They have a lot of shared decks hosted online

I have mixed feelings about shared decks. I’ve tried many, yet always find something about them that irritates me - aesthetics, content accuracy, etc. Or more likely that just doesn’t fit contextually with what I’m learning.

However, the low startup energy with shared decks is certainly a selling point. I can’t even begin to estimate how much time I’ve spent over the years creating 50K+ cards…

highly personalised system that doesn't need to work for anyone else.

My experience exactly.

clbrmbr7• 2 years ago

what the ecosystem would look like

There is a third-party paid exchange here:

https://www.ankihub.net/

(I’ve had a few exchanges with the founder, and wish him luck.)

growingkittens2• 2 years ago

These two things are related:

I can never keep the workload under control, or my habits change, and give it up.
to build up a highly personalised system that doesn't need to work for anyone else.

"Anyone else" includes "future you", because humans change over time. A highly personalized system is usually a highly inflexible system.

jan_Inkepa2• 2 years ago

Hmm. Let me think about your point.

The problem seems not dependent on the specifics of my efforts for me - it seems inherent to Anki for language-learning. That the flash cards have lots of bells and whistles seems unrelated to my giving up because 90 minutes a day wasn't enough to keep things under control.

I haven't had any time that my circumstances have change so much that my accessorising ended up a negative. (And I'm having trouble thinking of situations where that would be the case).

But sure, in general I can think of cases where it's probably more advisable to go with a general purpose solution (stairs rather than a climbing wall for going upstairs) in case personal circumstances change, temporarily or permanently.

jwrallie3• 2 years ago

I had the same experience. I invested a lot of time on Anki and it paid back, but I could never stick to it. There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up.

I recently started to use Supermemo because of some comments on HN, and so far it have been going quite well. I feel less overwhelmed when I have to take a break, I think the algorithm (or maybe it is just good defaults?) is much less punishing. I am still new to it, and I have a baggage of knowledge from my past experiences using SRS, so it is unfair to compare it to Anki at the moment. But it renew my passion for memorizing, so far it has been worth the investment.

cubefox• 2 years ago

I think Anki was based on an old version of Supermemo. It would make sense if the latter had a better algorithm.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up.

Some things I do to manage this:

You can put an upper bound on the number of cards reviewed per day. For me it's 50. After that it says I'm done for the day and I wait till the next day.

If missing only 2-3 days leads to such a huge backlog, you really need to take a break in adding new cards. My aim is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes per day reviewing cards. If it seems I always have too many cards to review, I don't add any new cards until I get only a few cards to review per day (when really busy, I don't add a new card until I have a day with 0 cards).

You can only learn so much per day. You need to limit card additions to ensure you don't exceed that amount.

The other thing I noticed is that I had two types of cards: One where the answer can be instantaneous (e.g. facts). And ones where some thinking is involved (proof sketch of a theorem, details of some algorithm, etc). The latter would kill the experience because of the time involved. So I separated the decks: Simple cards (the majority) go in one deck and this is reviewed daily. Hard cards have their own deck(s) and I'm not as committed to them - I work on them only when I know I have time and am committed to it.

jamager3• 2 years ago

Anki algorithm's is extremely punishing, which is awful for language learning.

I think SRS needs to be only a small part of the learning routine, the cherry on the cake. For me that is ~15 minutes / day, and backlog is manageable even if I occasionally take 2-3 days off.

stardom5761• 2 years ago

I also use anki for german. I use a deck with 1850 cards to learn the nouns' gender.

I just pulled up my stats.I have been studiyng for almost a year and have averaged less than 2 minutes of study a day (with the average review lasting less than 2 seconds). In total it's more or less 10 hours.

It has been insanely effective. I read somewhere on HN that making extremely easy cards helps. It for sure helped me to keep the habit.

jwells893• 2 years ago

I have issues keeping up with large language decks, too. In my case the problem usually lies not with Anki but all the other stuff going on in my life — stressors, work, etc. There’s just a cap on what I can be juggling at any point in time and if things aren’t flowing smoothly it’s going to be more difficult to stick to working through a long deck. If I could just hit pause on everything else there would be no problems.

Retention is high so that helps keep progress between periods of deck usage at least.

yjftsjthsd-h3• 2 years ago

Every few years I use Anki heavily for language stuff (German, more recently Latin and Classical Chinese), up to 90 minutes a day, but I can never keep the workload under control, or my habits change, and give it up.

Well... yeah? I guess if you're a full time student or something it's fine but IMO if your review times exceed 5 minutes it's time to stop adding cards for a while.

mustaflex• 2 years ago

I had the same problem when studying English. I just capped my review/new cards study time to 30 mins per day. Basically if you have too much cards to review your vocabulary hits a "plateau" until your workload becomes manageable again.

aoanla• 2 years ago

Yeah, I've had the same thing every time I have tried Anki - it's fine for a while, but once you get enough cards added, or just have been memorising a deck for long enough, even missing one session generates a huge unsurmountable backlog. It's bad and consistent enough for me that I just stopped trying to use Anki at all.

Swalden1234• 2 years ago

Is there no way to skip a day? And simply pause?

colin_jack• 2 years ago

FSRS seems to reduce the amount of reviews required, might be worth enabling it and seeing if it helps.

dotnet002• 2 years ago

Yeah I've had a similar issue with the Anki-like system Wanikani uses for learning Japanese Kanji. I can keep up for some time, but as soon as I get busy with something else, I get overwhelmed by the piling up reviews. It has been very effective for the ones I learned when I was able to keep up though.

Recently a friend got me into Duolingo with him, I've been managing to maintain a streak on it because if I'm too busy I can atleast just do a quick "lesson" before midnight, but I don't really find it to be very effective for learning unless you're coming from literally zero starting knowledge.

I already know the basic vocabulary (especially phonetically) and sentence structure, so it's too slow. I usually just do the first handful of lessons and have figured out the kanji enough to just jump ahead to the test to unlock the next unit.

atahanacar4• 2 years ago

Are you using Duolingo for Japanese? If so, please stop. There are better and more efficient ways, as you've probably noticed. Anki (with a Core3k or similar deck, 10-50 new cards a day depending on your daily life) + reading is the way to go in my opinion. You can use jpdb to see your progress relative to the material you want to read.

redcobra7627• 2 years ago

The trigger that helps me is Anki on my phone will put little notification badges on itself if I have cards to review, and I hate to see unresolved notifications, so it forces me to study.

AlexErrant• 2 years ago

I wonder what the ecosystem would look like if things were otherwise.

Shameless plug - I'm building https://github.com/AlexErrant/Pentive which is basically GitHub/Reddit for flashcards. Very much pre-product and a WIP, though the offline client proof of concept is done.

michaelcampbell4• 2 years ago

Every few years I use Anki heavily for language stuff (German, more recently Latin and Classical Chinese), up to 90 minutes a day, but I can never keep the workload under control, or my habits change, and give it up.

This is a problem, but perhaps not the one you think. The goal here is the habit; how much you get through is way secondary. As a multi-year user of Anki, I'd recommend working on the daily habit as an addition to whatever German, etc. you're already doing.

Anki has easy ways to limit your use; set your max-card-per-day to something silly like 5. You can do 5 cards a day, yeah? That'd take less than a minute, typically.

Once you're ok with that, up it a bit. Don't make this the SOLE vector of practice, use it as an adjunct to your normal routine of learning.

A habit done suboptimally is >>>> missing doing it, but perfectly. Frequency is generally better than quality. Once you get the former, ratchet up the latter.

cwales95• 2 years ago

Used Anki quite a bit in my final years of university. Using it now as well for AWS certification prep. Can’t recommend enough!

kashunstva2• 2 years ago

Long-term user of Anki ~ 13-14 yrs, with mostly language learning focus. It’s good; but out of the box, I find that most users barely tap into its utility. It’s templating engine, ability to shape card content and formatting via JS and CSS put it in a league above most other SRS applications. (With the caveat that it’s easy to waste a lot of time on inconsequential card-tweaking…)

A lot of people complain that it uses an inferior SRS algorithm. Other algorithms can be patched in; but I’ve never bothered because it seems like a hyper-optimization without known real-world outcomes. (i.e. Will I speak better {L2} if I use alternate SRS algorithm?)

subtra3t3• 2 years ago

I think the issue of inferior SRS algorithm is at least partly alleviated by the existence of FSRS.

OJFord6• 2 years ago

... https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The... ...

I'm not sure I believe we understand our own learning/memory anything like enough for this not to be total pseudoscience? Reminds me of A Beautiful Mind.

hiAndrewQuinn3• 2 years ago

Sitting down with Michael W. Lucas's Networking for System Administrators and making Anki flashcards out of them was probably the highest impact thing I did for my career last spring. It's an incredible tool, truly.

Anyone else who wants to learn just enough networking to never be 100% stumped by it again, I recommend both tools.

n3t• 2 years ago

Can you share what your typical flashcard for the book looks like?

hiAndrewQuinn3• 2 years ago

There's a bunch of different subtypes I've used. But one surprisingly high ROI example has been private vs public IP flashcard examples.

E.g. "10.1.0.0 - private or public?" "Private - everything in 10.0.0.0/8 is considered private". "192.169.0.0?" "Public".

realusername4• 2 years ago

I'm using a competitor on Android since both Anki apps (AnkiMobile and AnkiDroid) really aren't good enough for my language learning activity. They aren't as good as the desktop Anki app.

I'm actually thinking of building my own app for a while since the all the flashcard apps on mobile don't really work for me. Not sure I'll find the motivation to do it though, I'm just using the least bad option I've found.

Specifically, I want to always auto-play cards with TTS and there doesn't seem to be an option with the apps to do that.

gessha3• 2 years ago

That would be a cool extension of the project.

I’ve always wanted a hands free version of Dualingo because if I’m driving or walking somewhere I don’t want to use my hands for obvious reasons.

kebsup8• 2 years ago

Hi, my app which I've mentioned in my previous comment does that. Is there anything else that you're looking for in a flashcards language learning app that Anki misses?

realusername4• 2 years ago

It seems pretty good but your app is only targetting German right? I'm learning another language.

Right now I'm using this one : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.wor...

Which seems the only one I found supporting auto-TTS in lots of languages which you can toggle in the settings.

The UI is truly awful though and the space repetition algorithm is kind of borked.

david_allison7• 2 years ago

Hi, I've recently integrated TTS into the AnkiDroid alpha series, could you give it a whirl when you have time?

TTS instructions: https://docs.ankiweb.net/templates/fields.html#text-to-speec...

Installing the alpha alongside stable: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pQZT9jNF6MU

realusername4• 2 years ago

Thanks, I'll give it a go again!

clbrmbr7• 2 years ago

I used Anki to learn to recognize the top 300 plant species (and top mushroom species) in my area by sight. Totally changed my perception of nature.

yorwba• 2 years ago

How did you find out what the top species in your area are? Did you start by taking pictures of random plants and then researching what they could be, or did you use something like a guidebook? And what did your Anki cards look like?

clbrmbr7• 2 years ago

I used iNaturalist website to list 500 most observed plant species in Eastern USA and Canada, and used a script to scrape the species names (scientific and common) and the URL of the title photo.

I used another script to download the images and build the anki deck.

My decks have just the photo on the front, then scientific name + common name + notes on back.

I’ve made many notes in my decks, mostly about the etymology of the scientific names to help remember them.

I’ve also added extra photos to the front to show other parts of the plant needed to distinguish from look-alikes, with notes on these features.

My reference is usually The Flora of Virginia and/or Sam Thayer’s recent field guide (which is a major new contribution through all his field observations).

I have not shared because the photos are mostly ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, but I’ve been considering redoing the photos using CC0/CC-BY (and asking some authors for permission but this is hard as iNat is pseudonymous).

dfee• 2 years ago

Wow. This is a very cool idea. I occasionally get discouraged that I don’t know what trees are around me - because it reflects a disconnect from nature. This may be a great trick!

throw_pm23• 2 years ago

I tried to make it work for me many times. Several people in my circle recommend it, I understand the concept of spaced repetition, I wanted it to be useful. Still, it always feels off somehow, and mechanical, and never seems to click for me. I guess memorization is just not the bottleneck in anything I do.

james-bcn• 2 years ago

Yes. I've tried it various times too. But there is something that just doesn't seem right about it. It's memorisation for the sake of it.

I've found that writing about the things that interest me, giving presentations, and talking about stuff with people with similar interests, is much more effective.

dmarchand90• 2 years ago

In the most bizarre of coincidences I just installed anki now before seeing it on the front page of hackernews

subtra3t3• 2 years ago

A piece of advice: stick with it. The usefulness of Anki lies in its ability to efficiently schedule flashcards, so it will be of little use if you review cards only occasionally. Review most/all of your due cards everyday. If you find that your workload is too much stop creating new cards or perhaps increase the base multiplier for flashcard intervals (not recommended unless you're really exhausted).

sivers9• 2 years ago

My boy is 11 now. We've used Anki with him every day since he was about 5.

Examples of things he's memorized, for fun:

* every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map

* spelling

* many body parts, names of bones and organs, from illustration

* chemical elements, by symbol (Na, Fe, Zn, etc)

* unix filesystem commands

* numeracy references (km from here to Japan, earth to sun, meters from home to school)

* recognizing/naming photos of places we've been since he was born

* recognizing musical instruments or musical pieces by listening

* notes on a piano

* religious facts (when Judaism began & who started it, when Muslims pray & towards what, where Jesus was born & died, etc)

* names of characters in books he's read

* wise aphorisms

He enjoys it, and dances around while answering, proud of himself. Sometimes when learning something new on YouTube, on his own, he'll say, "Dad can we add this to Anki? I want to remember this."

l3x4ur1n• 2 years ago

Do you have any particular system in place for creating decks?

itsrajju3• 2 years ago

Your boy is precious! He's on his way to becoming a highly intelligent adult.

I've seen a lot of people going like... why remember stuff when you can easily google it? But it doesn't work that way. The more facts reside in your brain, the more avenues it has to connect them together and generate insights (after all, that thing is the OG "neural network").

I highly admire your parenting in this aspect, and I hope to do the same when I have kids of my own.

Edit: I noticed after publishing my comment that you're Derek Sivers! I've been a long time reader of your blog :)

exe345• 2 years ago

Yep! This kid has a super power! I don't understand why this sort of learning to learn isn't taught in schools - I only discovered anki and even spaced repetition at age 35, and I could really have used it at school!

I think the workaround that I came up with myself was to work through a large amount of derivations (maths, physics and chemistry) and try to note the common stuff and prepared shorter and shorter versions of the notes from which I could rapidly reconstruct everything else.

In hindsight, I was training an autoencoder.

jhrmnn• 2 years ago

I’ve never remembered anything by memorization. Only at school and university for exams, and only to promptly forget it one week later. The stuff that I have remembered for years I learned organically by using it, as part of some mental process, by embedding it in some larger structure. Be it coding, physics, or history. So I think this is a fairly individual matter

blago• 2 years ago

I think it's even more precious that the boy has learned how to learn and has developed a taste for achievement based on a dopamine loop that doesn't employ sugar or special effects in 4K.

_teyd• 2 years ago

I swear I have read this exact same comment before

Edit: oh good I’m not crazy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38428309

amelius• 2 years ago

You can put that card at the end of the deck now ;)

packetlost2• 2 years ago

That's super weird, I wonder if GP just copy-pasted it or if there's some other weird automated business going on.

koala_man• 2 years ago

Reposted story, reposted comment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

That's marketing for you - now with Genuine People Personalities™.

indigoabstract• 2 years ago

Proof for everyone that these programs do work. You have a good memory!

marcrosoft• 2 years ago

I clicked the comments section hoping to see sivers response because I remember him mentioning it before. I’m glad I did.

99catmaster2• 2 years ago

I’m curious, how did you manage to get a child into Anki and make them self sufficient on it? Kudos to you

sivers9• 2 years ago

We do it together, just 2-5 minutes a day. When I'm away he does it on his own maybe 50/50.

akxixn123• 2 years ago

Is he on the autism spectrum?

redcobra7627• 2 years ago

Who, the commenter or his child?

sivers9• 2 years ago

Not at all, and not particularly smart. Just a normal fun-loving kid, and this is something we do just 2-5 minutes a day.

shepherdjerred2• 2 years ago

Do you have a similar habit? How does one get started making Anki a habit? I've used Anki for studying before exams, but I haven't been able to integrate it into my life.

sivers9• 2 years ago

If you care enough, you'll do it. Every day I brush my teeth, write in my diary, do my Anki, check email, eat something, etc. It's only a few minutes a day.

FemmeAndroid• 2 years ago

Are these separate decks or a single deck for your son? Do things come out of the deck(s)? What triggers that?

sivers9• 2 years ago

His decks:

* computer

* culture

* English

* math

* music

* nature

* where

I don't think we've ever pulled anything out of the deck. There are some cards that it says, when we mark [easy], that it will ask him again in 6 years. We joke about how at the age of 17 it will be asking him how to spell "sing", or whatever.

kazinator8• 2 years ago

Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time.

every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map

That's a stupid thing to memorize, not to mention constantly churning due to political instability.

You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin.

Most educated people could recognize certain countries by shape, like Italy, Africa, USA. But every country? Come on ...

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin.

Pointless self imposed limitations don't help.

sevg2• 2 years ago

A parent is sharing their joy(!) of using Anki to help their child develop curiosity, feel a sense of accomplishment, and learn about the world.

And your response at someone else's joy is to swat it down and call it tedious and stupid?

commenter1234• 2 years ago

I wasn’t aware that Africa was a country, seems like I need to do some flashcard learning myself

yjftsjthsd-h3• 2 years ago

Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time.

I doubt anything requires Anki; rather it's more efficient than the alternatives.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

Curious: How many cards are in his deck(s)? Do you do it with him daily? I was wondering when to start with my kid. Any writeup would be great.

My other question: For me a lot of this is trivia (No judgement! That's fine!) Has he found it useful for education (i.e. school), and for anything that he applies on a semi-frequent basis (I suppose UNIX commands could be a good example).?

I personally have used SRS since late 2018, and it's been quite useful - as if releasing a latent superpower. But I haven't applied it for regular schooling.

Thanks!

sivers9• 2 years ago

About 1000 cards now. We do it daily. It's often just a few cards per day, so it takes 1-5 minutes.

Spelling is the biggest category. I record myself saying a word that I've seen him spell wrong. The answer is the written word.

Many of his old life-memories are saved. A picture of a playground he loved, where we used to live. A frame from a movie he liked. Asking for the name of the hero in a book he loved. Anki makes him recognize these things, which keep his memories of them alive. Often ilicits an "Oh yeah!" nostalgia.

Recognizing countries on the map is not trivial. On the playground, he met a kid from Syria. He asked the boy if he lived closer to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, or Lebanon. My jaw dropped, but the boy was touched and yelled, "Mom! He knows where it is!" and they became friends (for the day). Other times he'll decide out of the blue that he wants to know more about Azerbaijan or some other country that he only knows by shape.

The rest, he's just really proud to know. A kid at school says the moon is a million miles away. He was proud to know the more accurate distance. He wants to know the actual distance to the beach from our house, instead of just "takes forever".

dse• 2 years ago

one deck or a different one for each topic ?

arboles• 2 years ago

Interesting, because the creator of Supermemo wrote that Spaced Repetition doesn't work on children because their brain re-arranges and repurposes structures far too much, making children's forgetting curve far too unpredictable, or at least different from adults.

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SuperMemo_does_not_work_for_kids

Spaced repetition flaschard software is all about scheduling the flashcards around predictions of your forgetting curve, and Anki and Supermemo are designed for the forgetting curves of adults.

sivers9• 2 years ago

It's not perfect, but it's better than not doing it. He enjoys it.

appplication• 2 years ago

I think sometimes statements like this probably apply in aggregate, as in you can’t safely say they work in the general case due to too much response variance. But it’s not unrealistic to think it works well for some.

cratermoon• 2 years ago

I'm not certain that the research on forgetting curves has nailed down the timelines well. I know the Supermemo creator thinks his algorithm is best, but I suspect there's a lot of wiggle room and individual differences. Who besides Ebbinghaus has published rigorously on it?

DiogenesKynikos3• 2 years ago

when Judaism began & who started it

A bit off topic, but this is a very tricky question to answer. The traditional answer is Moses, ca. 1200 BC. The real answer would take many PhD theses to arrive at. It's really a process that took place between the 10th and 5th centuries BC (and arguably continued even much later than that).

Postosuchus• 2 years ago

Technically Abraham, as he was the one, with whom G-d established the Covenant. Although I'm pretty sure there are lengthy disputes in Talmud arguing that it started with Adam and Hava.

brcmthrowaway• 2 years ago

Jesus christ. I often wonder why I can't compete at school and this is why.. you never know how much prep/silver spoon other kids got

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

Derek Sivers is definitely better off than most of us, but what he's describing is something any engaged parent could do. That's not a "silver spoon". Hell, my family was lower-middle-income (into solid middle-income with both parents working, then down again, these things can cycle) and they would quiz us on things like that. Though not with Anki. It's just good parental engagement.

crimsontech2• 2 years ago

How is this silver spoon? I grew up in poverty and my mum taught me to real (and learned herself at the same time) before I started school. She did this so I wouldn’t suffer through school like she did.

I taught my daughter to read and write before she started school. Being part of your children’s education is awesome.

leobg2• 2 years ago

Siverspoon

ifeja• 2 years ago

You're setting your kid up for a bright future, great parenting.

alberth2• 2 years ago

Genuine question, how will memorizing this info help him?

I’m a parent too, and have prioritized activities that teach my child critical thinking (so they can self-solve problems).

I’m curious if I should be layering in some memorization activities like this, which is why I ask.

(Please don’t take my question as judging, I’m genuinely curious how it’s helped because I might replicate. And I’ve got huge respect for all your writing over the years)

HatchedLake721• 2 years ago

Any interesting links or suggestions on critical thinking activities? Thanks!

karim79• 2 years ago

Passive learning. One can memorize stuff without comprehending its purpose, finding a direct use for it. But having information stored or encoded in long-term memory allows for new experiences or findings to be augmented by stuff one has picked up in the past. I think all kinds of magic can happen when an individual has a 'mind-library' and can combine it with newer learnings.

lacrimacida• 2 years ago

It’s probably more useful for working out the memorization muscle than the information itself.

hayd• 2 years ago

Often to solve problems you need to have multiple pieces of knowledge at your fingertips (without having to lookup each piece up or reason about it from first principles).

In mathematics that might be related theorems/lemmas. In programming it might be existing functionality of libraries. Problem solving is often chaining a few things together, which you already know.

Children should understand how to derive the quadractic formula but memorizing makes solving equations a lot faster.

https://tabularasaeducation.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/knowled...

dirkc• 2 years ago

During the great internet blackout of 2032 he will be the one that remembers things!

logtempo• 2 years ago

To memorize something, it include two step: intake of information, and mobilization of this information.

So anki help to write into memory, expose to new things eventually, and associate two ideas. But the more there is association to ideas, to different contexts, the better.

I think kids benefit from Anki, it's not as different as a puzzle game, but side activities are as important as anki.

I think teaching kid all countries of the world might not be necessary, it might vanish if not used. But it's definitly not harmfull.

matthewfelgate• 2 years ago

I would also recommend sporcle quizzes as a good way of learning and practicing information. Eg flags and countries.

rvba• 2 years ago

Hope that the kid has time to have fun with friends as well, otherwise will become just a well educated sucker used by others.

jakderrida• 2 years ago

* unix filesystem commands

Father of the century, just for that alone.

more_corn2• 2 years ago

Is there a forum where users share their decks? Asking for a couple kids that age who I mentor ;-) — Answered my own question Ankiweb /shared/decks

c0ax9• 2 years ago

Sorry for the late response but I have a question regarding this that I hope you can answer.

I'm also a long time anki user for the purpose of learning a foreign language. It is one of the core tools that got me to the level that I am today. I like it so much that I am also using it with my son. I'm using it for spellings mostly. But (and here comes the question) I'm also contemplating making him another deck for the foreign language that I'm studying, however, I'm wondering whether to have separate decks or just one big deck of cards. What do you do with your son? Different decks for different topics or just lump them all together in the same singular deck?

Any advice would be most welcome.

rsanek• 2 years ago

General advice here is that separate decks are easier to review, but a single deck will result in better retention thanks to benefits of interleaving.

steeve• 2 years ago

Congratulations on your boy.

michaelcampbell4• 2 years ago

As long as you and he are getting something out of it, fine, but do be aware there is some research into SRS not at all working like (nor as well as) it does for completely-formed, mature brains.

1f60c• 2 years ago

Is there a good iOS app to create or review Anki flash cards?

subtra3t3• 2 years ago

There is an official app, made by the same devs.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493...

itsrajju3• 2 years ago

Yup -- https://apps.apple.com/in/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493...

It's expensive, but it's the only paid app by the creator of ankiweb (web, android, and desktop versions made by them are all free).

gessha3• 2 years ago

I recommend the iOS app by the original app develop for reviewing but the desktop version for creation.

ssd532• 2 years ago

That’s what I do. Creation is difficult on mobile, easy on desktop and review is easy on mobile but difficult on desktop.

lbotos• 2 years ago

I was hesitant to pay $25 for an iOS app but after doing reviews for 180 days I’m at $0.14 a day and it will only get cheaper… one of the best investments I’ve made for sure

Player62252• 2 years ago

I've been using Anki a bit to supplement my language learning. I built an Anki deck generator that makes emoji/tts/word flashcards! It's worked pretty well for me to get some better word recognition.

https://flashcards.bpev.me

OJFord6• 2 years ago

Nice! My feedback was going to be that I don't even know some of them in English (my native language) because it's just not clear to me what the emoji mix is supposed to mean, but I see that 'from emoji' is sort of the whole point, so that's not really helpful.

I've been wanting to use something like Anki as a general purpose 'knowledge base'/reminder/learning system; if I do use Anki I'll certainly add this, cheers.

Player62252• 2 years ago

Thanks! Yaya... selecting what emojis to show has been challenging, trying to balance clarity with word usefullness. Also cuz sometimes I miss how different some specific emojis look on different OS; it can muddy the intended meaning for some platforms.

david_allison7• 2 years ago

Just to note: Anki supports `{{tts}}`, using the system TTS providers

https://docs.ankiweb.net/templates/fields.html#text-to-speec...

francoismassot• 2 years ago

I used it with my 10 years old boy for spelling.

I like the method. I found the app is still rough on the edges, and now I want to code a small one dedicated to science fields for him :)

Tarrosion• 2 years ago

Anyone have suggestions for the lowest friction / best UX way to generate and study Anki cards? (my smartphone is Android, if that matters.)

I know spaced repetition is super helpful and I should be making and study cards to help with language learning and other topics I'm studying, but it always feels like a slog to try to find a deck (which won't end up being what you want) or manually make a bunch of cards, the UI is a little meh, etc.

SamPatt5• 2 years ago

I take notes on paper while studying the subject, then when I'm done I put the essential concepts or whatever I want to memorize into cards in Anki via my computer (I usually avoid adding them on my phone, it's slower).

It is a slow process, but for getting new ideas to stick, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

I don't usually bother with preexisting decks. If you’re building your own from your own study, it almost guarantees you actually understand what you're trying to memorize.

exe345• 2 years ago

For language learning, I tend to watch TV with subtitles, type the new words into a text file, run that through Google translate (and edit a little bit), save as CSV, and import via the desktop app.

igloopan• 2 years ago

To generate: if you're trying to learn Japanese, you can use the Yomichan [1] (or Yomitan now that Yomichan [2] has been sunset) extension for Chrome or Firefox which integrates with Anki so you can create a card for a word you don't know with two key presses.

[1] https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/ [2] https://github.com/themoeway/yomitan

g-w13• 2 years ago

Anki has literally changed the way I think. It's insane how I can just choose to remember anything and how I have gotten really good at creating flashcards to the point where I predict how I'm going to learn when making flashcards. It is the one thing that has easily changed my life.

exe345• 2 years ago

I see it as a commitment, this is something I will remember for as long as I choose to. If it becomes irrelevant, I can delete the card. If it's too hard, I'll break it down into simpler things, or sometimes I even just write stuff out on paper cards that I review throughout the day. But once it's in anki, I'm committing to remembering it.

OJFord6• 2 years ago

Weird, I was actually thinking of a related AskHN, that comments here are obviously now the place for.

Is there anything similar people use for sort of general 'knowledge base' type things - like people use one big text file, or Obsidian, or Logseq, or Notion, or whatever - but with some kind of Anki-like reminder/retrieval rather than just deliberate searching to look something up?

Or do people successfully use Anki itself in that way? (Maybe I'm wrong to associate it with focussed studying/cramming on a specific topic for an exam say?)

The closest I could think of was a Zettlekasten system, where though you wouldn't have the automated reminder prompts, you would (if you'd done a good job linking things) have a rabbit hole to fall down once you opened something.

itsrajju3• 2 years ago

There's an Obsidian plugin for Anki -- https://github.com/reuseman/flashcards-obsidian

It connects with your Anki desktop app. You create notes in Obsidian in a specific format, and they get converted to Anki flashcards. This way your flashcard creation process becomes much easier if you already use Obsidian for note-taking.

nairboon2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, while super useful, that plugin is quite out-of-date. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't depending on what Obsidian/Anki version combination you use. If one of them updates, it breaks. I think I had to pin Obsidian to some older version to keep it working.

naitgacem• 2 years ago

I think a related, but often overlooked question is: is there really a need for remembering things off the top of one's head?

Since there was no need to look it up, perhaps it's not relevant to whatever one is doing at the moment.

nanna• 2 years ago

When learning a language, yes!

OJFord6• 2 years ago

There are things I used to understand while studying that I no longer do, but wish I did. I can look them up and understand if I want to intentionally use them, but they're not sort of available in my mind for me to draw on; information that might apply to something without me knowing in order to look it up, if that makes sense?

And also as a sibling comment says, language. In particular vocabulary - I've learnt a decent amount of Hindi grammar by self-study, in fact I think totally sufficient for casual or even professional conversation, but my vocabulary's really lacking, and it holds me back from speaking, which means even when I do have the opportunity to practice speaking with others, I can only say stupid basic things, I lack the vocabulary to say what I want most of the time. (And casual Hindi's way more forgiving than most languages, because 'Hinglish' is so common. But I don't get any better by just using Hindi connectives and ancillary words in an otherwise English sentence!)

SamPatt5• 2 years ago

I'm studying data structures and algorithms, out of interest, and to pass technical interviews. I can't fire up ChatGPT during interviews.

Anki has definitely helped me. It's surprising how well it works if you do it daily.

I also add new cards when I come across a word I don't know. If I keep this up for years or decades, my vocabulary should be extraordinary.

niyumard• 2 years ago

Actually Logseq comes with built-in flash cards. That's why I love it.

https://unofficial-logseq-docs.gitbook.io/unofficial-logseq-...

OJFord6• 2 years ago

Interesting, maybe I should try it out again. I wanted to like it, but I just kept hitting bugs even just for basic things as I was getting started. I think the big showstopper one for me was something like link a page and then rename it, and the link's broken; I found an issue for it and the response was like unfortunately due to implementation detail this is really hard and probably won't-fix. At which point I just thought ok nope that's table stakes as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: found it: github.com/logseq/logseq#7519 (maybe there's another way of a basic page link that isn't a query so it's not quite as bad as I described above, but still)

a7b3fa• 2 years ago

RemNote seems like a close match to what you're describing: https://www.remnote.com

bob_theslob6462• 2 years ago

What is rem note?

pavelboyko• 2 years ago

Spaced repetition, especially when using tools like Anki, is effective for memorizing facts. However, memorization represents the most basic level of learning objectives, see e.g. [1] and [2]. Are there any recommended tools for practicing more advanced levels of knowledge, such as relational analysis, synthesis, and critical evaluation?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_of_observed_learni...

ehnto• 2 years ago

Immersion is the only "tool" I know that tries to make the next leap formalized. For language learning at least, saturating yourself with input lets the brain build the deep relational maps it needs to use language, and no amount of rote learning of arbitrary grammar and vocab can replace that process.

spencerchubb2• 2 years ago

I think the closest thing would be concept mapping software or knowledgebase software like Obsidian. But that's more about storing concepts and not so much about learning concepts.

If that software existed, it would be incredible.

ckbishop• 2 years ago

Obsidian has a spaced repetition community plugin that I use when I write documentation. I add a flashcard for everything that I want to learn.

So you just put #flashcards inline (or whatever you tell it to look for) at the bottom if your file.

And then:

This is a question::this is the answer. This is another question::this is another answer.

I run through my cards about 30 minutes before I start work. It works very well.

xbar2• 2 years ago

I think you are minimizing something that is very important.

Understanding deeply and completely any topic is much easier when you understand deeply and completely the fundamental components and concepts--which starts with memorization.

unshavedyak• 2 years ago

Yea, i thought that was studied, but perhaps not. Ie the knowledge we retain help us formalize larger more complex thoughts. Perhaps facts are a too small unit? Though i don't see why you couldn't also use Spaced Rep to memorize larger relationships.

sajforbes• 2 years ago

This idea was the foundation for the Quantum Country book [0], which was essentially an experiment in combining reading with spaced repetition learning to let you do just that: understand a topic deeply.

Anyone interested in the theoretical underpinnings of the idea can read about it in the blog post [1] the co-authors wrote. For anyone who objects to the idea that rote-memorisation can aide learning rather than simply let you mechanically repeat facts, you should read the paragraph "How important is memory, anyway?" [2].

[0] https://quantum.country/ [1]: https://numinous.productions/ttft/ [2]: https://numinous.productions/ttft/#how-important-is-memory

michaelcampbell4• 2 years ago

Indeed. Having a good memorization of "building blocks" of whatever higher minded thing you're looking into allows a lot more native synthesis of ideas.

It also keeps you from having to interrupt your flow to stop and go look something up.

FL33TW00D2• 2 years ago

You can use Anki to learn subjects more deeply - it's just harder.

Check out this experimental work to learn Quantum Physics using SRS: https://quantum.country/

g-w13• 2 years ago

You can use incremental reading, which is built on top of spaced repetition. Lots of people have invented it independently [1] and it works amazingly! Once you get the hang of it, it changes the way you think about learning stuff.

[1] https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Michael_Nielsen_re-discovers_inc...

kazinator8• 2 years ago

Going to school.

mumblemumble2• 2 years ago

The best tool for that kind of thing is developing good note-taking skills.

When I'm doing language study, for example, the backbone of my memory reinforcement strategy is a plain old pen-and-paper notebook. Anki is only used for specific, targeted reinforcement.

Most my time with Anki these days is learning Chinese characters. That's arguably an ideal use case for brute-forcing with SRS, and that is indeed a very popular way to learn them. But I prefer to start with good note-taking there, too. I keep a notebook where I write down new characters and make some notes about their composition, etymology, and the nature of any relationship they might have with other characters that have a similar appearance or show up as components in this new one. IME even the simple act of physically jotting down a handwritten note to not confuse 买 with 卖 or 找 with 我 is worth some large number of flashcard repetitions all by itself.

I also create cards for hanzi in Anki, but typically only after I've already encountered it a few times in my reading and it's starting to feel familiar. Leech cards are a huge waste of time when tackling a large subject, so I don't really like to add a card to my deck until I'm reasonably confident that I won't be hitting the "again" button on it more than once or twice, if ever.

bob_theslob6462• 2 years ago

Is there something that you would personally recommend in order to develop better note taking skills?

pessimizer• 2 years ago

Supermemo (an earlier-established piece of Anki-adjacent software) and its fans are big pushers of something called "Incremental Reading":

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading

https://www.help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_reading

hereme8882• 2 years ago

Initial deck: simple facts. More advanced decks, after simple facts are memorized: concept-based.

Example:

Front: Rotator cuff tear - diagnosis? Why would this make sense?

Back: MRI is generally better for soft tissue; you wouldn't use a CT scan, which is much better for bone. Remember that X-rays / CTs generally work by shooting high-frequency electromagnetic radiation "X-rays" at tissue - if the tissue has dense elements like Ca++ in bone, the X-rays will be reflected back by the dense elements. This is why X-rays and CTs are good for detecting dense things like blood (iron in heme is dense), bone (calcium is dense) or even why we use contrast (things like barium or iodide are dense elements)

Noumenon723• 2 years ago

Do doctors keep this much in their heads? I would have this in a notes system that I could recover by searching for "rotator cuff" during the appointment. I know I'd never remember it all, but maybe with Anki I would.

jamager3• 2 years ago

techniques >> tools

Work on encoding information, understand things deeply, relate concepts, and then create your cards.

For language learning, for instance, this means that if you have 10 new words you want to learn, you create f.ex. 15 sentences so that each sentence contains 2 of those words, and each words appears in 3 sentences. Then you run them eg. by your a tutor to validate them, and add it to your Anki deck.

Now you will only review each sentence 5-8 times, and you can do it very fast.

Doesn't need to be exactly like that, but you get the idea

siddbudd• 2 years ago

For all you people who have used Anki or other SRS for many years: how do you get over the problem of being bored by it? Or does that not happen to you?

Though I have not used Anki, I used a similar SRS for learning Chinese - the flashcards built in Pleco, but no matter how often I try to use it, I never last longer than 5-10 days, I just get bored by it. Also, no matter how I try to adjust the algo, I have the feeling that I am constantly over- or underwhelmed, no flow for me.

In the meanwhile I love learning, no matter if flashy (e.g. Duolingo) or traditional (from books) or something in between (a class), but I just never got the hang of SRS, though so many people recommend it.

jwrallie3• 2 years ago

This is quite subjective, but for me being in control of what I learn in SRS means I don't get bored. I am only adding things that I am interested in learning, and if I become bored of something, I just delete it.

It might sound counter-intuitive with the "remember things forever" side of SRS, but it is better to forget boring things than not use SRS at all.

biophysboy2• 2 years ago

I’ve used it for 4 years now to learn Japanese. It might be a simple matter of lowering the max # of review cards or the max # of new cards.

Also, given that you mentioned enjoying duolingo more, there are browser extensions/repos out there to enhance the Anki experience. I have some that help me make cards based on material I’m reading for fun.

I was having the same issue as you, and I had to fix it by making it more engaging and personal. Now all of my words concern material I’m interested in, and have some context.

TheArcane• 2 years ago

there are browser extensions/repos out there to enhance the Anki experience

Any specific ones you wanna give a shout out to?

Version4675• 2 years ago

So I have never actually used Anki for languages specifically, but I use it heavily for almost everything I deem important enough that I want to remember.

There are two very common reasons why people lose interest/motivation after trying out Anki. The first one is creating too many cards when you first start out. People get excited by SRS and then start creating cards for a lot of things, especially for stuff they don't actually care to remember. This is understandable, since you can't do SRS when you have nothing to repeat. But that gets overwhelming quickly, because it's hard to be motivated if you don't actually care about the material.

The solution for this is to only create flashcards when an opportunity arises organically. This has the additional benefit of your review sessions being extremely short in the beginning, which makes it easier to establish the habit of reviewing.

The second problem that often leads to people quickly giving up is not knowing what makes a good card. It's actually not as easy as one might think. Especially not when you want to get more out of SRS than just rote memorization of trivia. There's an excellent article from Andy Matuschak on this topic that explains it way better than I ever could https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/

If you specifically want to do language learning, then you might be tempted to download premade decks. This might work a little bit better than for everything that's not languages, but in my experience making a card is at least as important as the repetition itself. It forces you to distill the knowledge down into good cards, which is only possible if you engage with the material and also helps you find gaps in your knowledge. So I'd recommend against it.

Regarding your comment on adjusting the repetition algorithm... don't. It's highly unlikely that you'd be able to improve on the defaults if you don't have a good feel for how slow/fast you forget things. Even then, it's pretty difficult to make good adjustments. It's much more likely that the flow you're missing is just from not doing it long enough.

Hope that helps :)

guytv2• 2 years ago

I've noticed that sticking exclusively to words I already know results in boredom, leading me to skip several days. This typically ends with me needing to catch up in a lengthy session (40 minutes to an hour), which seems less effective for memory retention.

Now, I make it a point to introduce new words at least weekly, which maintains my interest and reduces boredom. The challenge of new words, balanced with the familiarity of known ones, creates an engaging experience, much like a well-designed game with a mix of easy and challenging elements. This approach keeps me motivated.

Additionally, actively using the language by conversing with native speakers greatly enhances my motivation. The positive feedback and tangible understanding of its value significantly boost my commitment to learning.

queuebert3• 2 years ago

I love Pleco, especially the OCR, but I had the same experience. Learning from flash cards is boring to me and, no matter how well I drill it, I eventually forget the material. Probably it works better for people who will be using Mandarin/HSK vocabulary in the near future and for a long duration.

hiAndrewQuinn3• 2 years ago

User of Supermemo, then Mnemosyne, then Anki for about 11 years. I use them for all kinds of stuff, language learning (Finnish) being one of them over the last few years.

If I'm bored by it one day, I just don't do it that day. Or week, like this one, where I was too entrancee by playing FTL.

Then I let myself get back into it. It comes and goes in waves. That's fine. The only person keeping score is yourself.

nairboon2• 2 years ago

Anki is a great software, but unfortunately it is quite difficult to install on Linux systems. Almost all packages on major distros are by now years out of date or kicked out, because Anki changed its build systems so many times, that the existing package maintainers simply dropped it: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/issues/1378

Nowadays, the Anki version in Ubuntu is from 2019! The snaps are also hopelessly outdated.

red_trumpet• 2 years ago

The package on Flathub[1] seems to incorporate the most recent version.

[1] https://flathub.org/apps/net.ankiweb.Anki

mu53• 2 years ago

Just to add another perspective, I use the anki package on apt/ubuntu and yum/fedora, and both repos work for me. I ran into one small issue on fedora that was really annoying, but it was fixable. The sync from the cloud worked on both

tuna743• 2 years ago

I just installed the Flathub version on Fedora. No problem at all!

Some addons seem to be not installable due to obsolete deps (like PyQt5), but a lot of stuff work without any problems.

jwells893• 2 years ago

It’s also a pain to get working right with fractional scaling on non-GTK desktops.

I had been using GNOME on my little “study pod” ThinkPad X1 Nano (which has a screen that requires 1.5x UI scale) but Anki was a real pain under that and so started using KDE instead. Anki runs well there but KDE isn’t quite my cup of tea. Wish it were more DE-agnostic.

userabchn• 2 years ago

There is no Anki package for Debian 12, and the binaries on the Anki website are only 64bit, so on my 32bit system I use the online version on ankiweb.net, which actually works pretty well.

albntomat0• 2 years ago

I’ve used their tarballed installer, which is straightforward. The app itself then checks for updates, and displays a reminder when there’s a new version.

Not as nice as having an updated version in apt, but it’s a trivial amount of work for something I personally get so much value out of.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

Use Mnemosyne instead.

I personally use org-drill on Emacs.

syngrog66• 2 years ago

This is like the 20th time the Anki-promoting mafia have posted it on HN

yes, kids: we know Anki exists

gessha3• 2 years ago

I see value in different HN-“mafias” posting about their favorite niches from time to time. It’s a reminder of sorts that the niche exists and that people find value in it.

In this case, I like following the spaced repetition algorithm development and integrations into tools like Obsidian and Logseq.

I’m trying to get back into using the tool every now and then to see if it works for the current me.

exe345• 2 years ago

So you're saying "easy, 4 days" for the next repetition?

Swalden1234• 2 years ago

The fact I didn’t know about SRS till I was 30, is a sad one. School and university would have been much easier for me had I known about it. I am very happy for it to be posted constantly!

victorlf2• 2 years ago

Anki is unbeatable for acing any test with a bounded number of questions [1]. It's been successfully used by some top TV show contestants to remember thousands of words [2].

I've been using it recently to remember recipes and cooking facts, such as the time it takes to boil X vegetable, or the ingredients for some dish.

Apart from language learning and medicine, there's a lack of pre-built decks that you can use to learn topics. I'm building Python.cards [3] to apply spaced repetition to learn Python with pre-built decks, daily reminders, etc. to make it the most convenient.

[1] https://www.thediligentdeveloper.com/spaced-repetition-reall...

[2] https://www.esquire.com/es/tecnologia/a36913467/pasapalabra-...

[3] https://python.cards

jwrallie3• 2 years ago

When Anki is the right tool for the job, it is amazing. I used it to study the questions for the FCC radio amateur license. Pre-made decks were available, so I just loaded it and studied on my phone when I had free time. I had around 2 months before the test, so it was very pleasant to slowly go through all the questions.

victorlf2• 2 years ago

It seems the tricky part is motivation. Very few people get excited by card-reviewing itself. The method shines when there is external pressure, such as exams.

I think a sense of community can help provide this motivation (like a group of people all learning at the same time), but it's still tricky.

saintradon2• 2 years ago

Definitely interested in the Python cards - subscribed

aldanor2• 2 years ago

Anki is great.

Used it when learning/practicing music theory - generated flash cards with notes and chords (python script that generates LilyPond, iirc), been a huge help, much better than 'specialized' apps that basically do the same.

guiltygods• 2 years ago

How did you do it? Can you share an example?

aldanor2• 2 years ago

Don't have the link anymore but it's pretty simple, I'm sure you can even do it with a bash script. Generate .ly files with scores whichever way you want, convert them to png via lilypond cli, then generate flash cards containing references to those images

tonyjstark3• 2 years ago

A lot of people seem to like shared card decks but creating your own cards is part of the learning process, you spent time with the material you want to learn, which is the main thing that helps you learning.

shameless self-plug:

On macos and iOS we found Anki a bit out of place so we build a competitor explicitly for language learning (https://wokabulary.com/).

tempaccount12342• 2 years ago

Looks like a cool app, but a monthly subscription for a content free flash card App is asking too much. (Personally I prefer my learning tools to stay around without monthly payments)

tonyjstark3• 2 years ago

We plan to introduce a lifetime purchase.

Initially, and for many years, we also tried to not have a subscription but steady development needs to paid somehow, same goes for customer support. If Apple would allow for paid upgrades…

nmfisher• 2 years ago

Were conservative pundits outraged that you were pushing wokabulary?

tonyjstark3• 2 years ago

Haha, at least it hurts our Google score. When we came up with the name it was just an innocent wordplay.

lordwiz• 2 years ago

I have heard many times of this, I even have it installed. Need to start using this now, seeing the benefits in this thread makes me excited.

SamPatt5• 2 years ago

One tip for working with Anki: you will likely learn better - and review cards more regularly - if you write the cards yourself instead of using a preexisting deck.

Going through a course / textbook -> taking notes on paper -> adding key concepts as Anki flashcards -> reviewing them daily: extremely effective

Preexisting decks can work - I used one to successfully study for my Amateur Radio License - but that assumes a specific pool of questions you're memorizing, which isn’t how learning a subject typically works.

tussa• 2 years ago

if you write the cards yourself

I'd go so far to say it's almost an requirement. Unless you have a high quality deck made specifically for the book/course/material you have.

Sadly most of the publicly available Anki are IMHO not of that quality.

Version4675• 2 years ago

Even if they were, writing cards yourself forces you to engage with the material in a way that's highly conducive to learning it. It makes knowledge gaps more visible and forces you to understand it if you want to have any chance breaking the material down into pieces that make good cards.

The positive effects of SRS rely just as much on the repetition as they do on the creation of the cards. I know that not everyone agrees with this, it's certainly been true for me.

Premade decks might work for language learning, but even then I'd be wary.

mabster2• 2 years ago

I started making the cards, noticed a lot of repetition in what I was doing and then started coding solutions to clusters of cards.

I definitely spent way too long on the "making the cards" phase!

redcobra7627• 2 years ago

ChatGPT is great at taking my notes and turning them into Anki cards. Some tweaks are occasionally needed, but I have done well on numerous exams letting ChatGPT figure out the cards (and the formatting tedium) for me.

tyrust• 2 years ago

This is the opposite of what the commenter is suggesting.

queuebert3• 2 years ago

So is your brain.

ametrau• 2 years ago

Time to write card: x. Number of times review card: x * big number.

burntwater3• 2 years ago

Would you mind giving an example of the kind of prompt(s) you use to get these card generated?

On a different note, ChatGPT has been making me feel stupid because I fail to come up with many use cases, while it seems like tons of technically unskilled people come up with all kinds of uses...

atahanacar4• 2 years ago

if you write the cards yourself instead of using a preexisting deck

I disagree with this. Anki's power comes from spaced repetition. Spending your time creating cards instead of actually reviewing the material is very inefficient. If high quality decks exist for the topic you're learning, use them instead. I've learned this the hard way.

Fields like medicine and language learning (you will still need to create your own deck for sentence mining but that's different as it's not a time sink) have great decks. For actual "niche" topics though, creating your own decks is your only choice.

For people who are going to create their own decks: check the Anking deck to see how to create "great" cards.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

It's great when high quality decks exist, but I doubt they do for what I use it for. Also, even when they do exist, chances are still high you'll find pieces of knowledge missing, and will have to create your own card.

poirot2• 2 years ago

I disagree with this strongly. Isolated individual facts don’t give you an overview or macro-structure to place the facts within. It’s very inefficient. Can only speak for medicine but using another persons deck is ‘quicker’ but performance is so much worse. Even in just learning how to summarise the info for yourself you gain a lot.

jamager3• 2 years ago

Not at all, see f. ex.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_effect

zilti• 2 years ago

Even for learning in general. We even had teachers who told us we're allowed to make tiny cheat sheets - about 6x3cm or something - because the mere process of creating the sheet is a good learning strategy, and to fit all you don't know on such a small sheet means you already know almost everything.

kirill5pol• 2 years ago

I definitely agree that to absolutely maximize learning you should write the cards yourself but I think it really depends on the value of the content, say it may be 2x as effective for learning but take 5x the amount of effort.

For some things where you want to learn but don't want to/have time to put in full effort premade cards are better than nothing. For example, I ended up learning German to B1 level from Duolingo (+ friends/time in germany) because using Duolingo was pretty low effort, even if it wasn't the fastest most effective way of learning.

I think this is probably true for most things you may want to learn about outside of your job, school, or really strong reasoning behind it. Perfect is the enemy of good as they say

(Shameless plug: I made a tool that makes spaced repetition questions for educational YouTube videos/podcasts that you watch, usually I was forgetting everything and wasn't really that invested to spend the time making decks for everything I watch, so I landed on this! https://www.platoedu.org)

rikafurude21• 2 years ago

Is duolingo actually good for learning languages? i tested it briefly and it seemed more like a minigame of constructing sentences

lamtung• 2 years ago

Wow, your tool is amazing. I have been searching for something like this for quite some time and even thought of writing such tool myself.

pawelduda• 2 years ago

Using someone else's decks in Anki === using vim with someone else's .vimrc

Noumenon723• 2 years ago

I downloaded premade cards for the Security+ exam acronyms[1]. Not only did it save me the time of making over 350 cards, but their selection of cards and explanations gave me more learning that wasn't in my notes. Like you say, it's good for a specific pool of questions.

1. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1553224110

mcmoor• 2 years ago

Is there any easy way to make card on mobile? I will likely never do this on PC and I haven't really see any easy way to do it on mobile

dustincoates2• 2 years ago

Like many people, I started using Anki for language learning, and it has been wildly useful for that. I'm always told that I have a good vocabulary, which was precisely my problem last time I tried to learn a language.

Since then, I've branched into many other topics. The latest one that I've started building out is all of the Paris métro lines and stops. The most useful thing ever? No, but I feel happy knowing that I have a better understanding of the system I'm using ever day.

lenartowski3• 2 years ago

SSR tools and flashcards are amazing for knowledge retention. When I started learning new language, my google sheet with words I wanted memorize grew to hundreds pretty quickly. I wanted the simplest possible app that would let me to import and repeat words from my list anytime I have even a few minutes to spare. And being a developer, of course I decided to write one myself. It’s a bit different than anki and obviously has less features (it’s a pet project after all) but the concept is pretty similar: https://byheart.io/

alabhyajindal3• 2 years ago

This looks amazing! Love the design.

lenartowski3• 2 years ago

Thanks, appreciate feedback! Let me know if you have any questions

kebsup8• 2 years ago

(Shameless plug at the end)

During my Erasmus in Germany, I've tried almost all of the top language learning apps (Duolingo, Babel, Seedlang, Anki...) and none of them have really worked me.

What I wanted was:

* Learning in context --> A lot of German words do not have direct English/Czech translation, so learning the 1:1 word translation did not work well

* Having audio for each card

* Intensive pace --> Going through a lot of cards in one session. Duolingo is the worst in this as you spend a lot of time doing super easy childish exercises. If I want to learn let's say 30 min a day, I want to pack as much content as I can into it.

* Skipping ahead --> My level is around B1/B2, I don't want to do placement tests and then re-learning the words I already know

* Learning from my content --> I like to consume German podcast/youtube videos/websites and in some apps, it was quite difficult or impossible to add words I've just encountered "in the wild".

Anki has worked the best, but generating cards with sentences and audio was quite cumbersome and (a seemingly minor detail) I was loosing flow while thinking whether I knew the card "well", "good", "easy" or whatever the options are. What I like better is a simple knew/didnt know, while still using spaced-repetition.

So for the past year, I'm on-off working on a language learning app, currently only supports German, which helps you extract words from content (youtube, web, text), handles different word forms, and then generates cards with infinitely many sentence examples through GPT4, with a nice audio (latest GCP model).

The project website with Android and iOS links: https://vokabeln.io/ (web design is old, app looks very different now)

exe345• 2 years ago

What I like better is a simple knew/didnt know, while still using spaced-repetition.

Could you just click on the two ends, 1min Vs the scaled max time? I.e. ignore the two middle buttons.

clbrmbr7• 2 years ago

Dude. You rock at UX design. This is amazing…

Only trouble I have tbh is figuring out what I want to read in German! But I’ve signed up and will give this a spin, and send what feedback I can.

kebsup8• 2 years ago

Thanks! My design is the one on the website. The neo-brutalism was done by a junior designer who was looking for her first project and she did extremely good job!

kebsup8• 2 years ago

Also if you are going to give this a try, two features that are missing and frequently requested: - articles and plurals for nouns - wordlist with A1, A2, B1 words for people doing certificates I'm hoping to implement them next month.

clbrmbr7• 2 years ago

I’d recommend using GPT4 to generate English sentences and then Google Translate to get the German. Harder to get example sentences for a specific German word, but may improve the quality of the German. (I had this issue when generating specialized language learning podcasts in Swedish and Polish. Lots of English-isms in GPT4’s output).

jamespwilliams2• 2 years ago

I can recommend this too, although I use DeepL instead of Google Translate, and I also use DeepL Write to identify issues in my grammar

jamespwilliams2• 2 years ago

It doesn’t cover all of your requirements but you might find Clozemaster interesting

kebsup8• 2 years ago

Yes, I've tried that one as well, but text input is too difficult and slow, whereas multiple choice is too easy. A lot of the time, I would be able to click correct option elimination method.

samus5• 2 years ago

If you are really overwhelmed by the answers, then you could stick to just one or two of them. I agree that having too many can be overwhelming. The SRS algorithm should still work. I don't recommend to use "well", as you won't see the cards again for a very long time.

leobg2• 2 years ago

Your landing page shows this example:

Der Fußballspieler schießt auf das _____.

Should be “Tor”. Nobody would say “Ziel”.

sebnun• 2 years ago

Nice, it would be useful to have this in other languages.

kebsup8• 2 years ago

I'll add more, once I figure out how to do at least one language well, but will do in a few months.

tuna743• 2 years ago

Ankidroid question here:

On Android systems, if you use the free Japanese dictionary Japanese Kanji Study (by Chase Colburn) it can generate Anki flash cards directly from the app, so everytime you look up a word you can also generate the card for Ankidroid/Anki.

Is there similar functionality in any Chinese dictionary app for Android?

david_allison7• 2 years ago

Pleco: Settings - Flashcards - Flashcard System - select AnkiDroid

I believe the wiki[0] lists most of the apps which use our API

https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Third-Party-A...

tuna743• 2 years ago

I could never get Pleco to work. What settings do you use?

bbno42• 2 years ago

love anki! i use it for japanese. although i wish i could donate to the devs at least, they dont take donations

david_allison7• 2 years ago

If you really want, buy AnkiMobile [0] as a gift for someone (the only monetisation for the dev)

AnkiDroid has an Open Collective [1] https://opencollective.com/ankidroid

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493...

[1] https://opencollective.com/ankidroid

https://faqs.ankiweb.net/how-can-i-donate.html

jwells893• 2 years ago

Been using Anki on and off for years for learning Japanese and more recently, have been using it for studying for university courses.

It’s a great tool, but it’s definitely got some oddities, like how its editor has every formatting and templating tool under the sun but is somehow missing spell check, how some features can only be had through fragile extensions, or how for some reason it’s one of the few programs one shouldn’t install from their distro’s package manager.

One of these days I’d like to take a crack at building my own cross-platform subject-agnostic SRS card app. There’s a number of things I’d do differently.

knubie• 2 years ago

Check out Mochi if you’re looking for an alternative. It probably ticks most of your boxes already.

https://mochi.cards/

saintradon2• 2 years ago

I love anki, I've used it from everything to Japanese to my college lectures, but my only issue is that it's UI/UX is a bit subpar, there's quite a learning curve to figure out all the little bits and details of the program, and it's easy to waste your time tweaking flashcard layout settings instead of actually studying. Then again, for me, I found often times for college lectures I rarely actually used the flashcards in traditional anki format - I found the act of cultivating all my notes, homework, organizing questions, creating layouts, creating the flashcards - that alone was 50% of the review that I needed to study the material.

alabhyajindal3• 2 years ago

Can anyone comment on why most people want software like Anki to be a native application? Most people who implemented their own SRS have done so in the form of a mobile app. Why?

I would think that having a web app would be much easier from a single developer point of view: maintain one application that can be accessed from any device. I am biased because I'm a web developer but I'd like to be corrected.

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

I want a native app for Anki (and similar things) because I don't always have an internet connection. It's pretty much as simple as that. Anki does have a web version which I have used, though.

lenartowski3• 2 years ago

Progressive web apps[0] are one solution to that. I’m not saying it’s perfect but it is possible to have both I think

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app

kazinator8• 2 years ago

With a mobile app like AnkiDroid, you can do SRS where you have no coverage. E.g. waiting in a car, while parked several levels underground.

vsizov• 2 years ago

Anki is awesome. I used it for a couple of years to improve my English vocabulary but I ended up using spreadsheets like airtable because of few reasons:

1) Import/export is limited when I want to create a batch of flashcards from the list (from ChatGPT for example)

2) It's hard to stick to it and do it everyday. I wish it showed some progress in motivating way. This is why we use TODO lists after all. We human beings love to see the progress. I wish it also included some sticky effect of Pop It Game or Bubble Wrap.

So I just created an Airtable table with few fields: Word, Translation, Days, Repeat (function field "DATEADD(Edited, Days, 'days')"), - used for filtering, Attachment, Edited_at (automatic field).

"Days" is "Single select": 1, 4, 10, 25, 55, 90, 200 days. I set this field with number of days I want to repeat flashcard in.

Sounds cumbersome but it's not. I see the progress - less rows in the table after every click. It's far from ideal anyway and it's not an actual SSR of course but it works for me. And because of some reason it's easier to stick to.

Anyway, Anki is great for most of the cases.

heap_perms• 2 years ago

I wish it showed some progress in motivating way.

There is a very popular plugin called Heatmap which essentially shows you a github-style graph in anki. Instead of commit frequency it counts reviews.

99catmaster2• 2 years ago

Any Anki power users here have any anecdotes with FSRS?

spencerchubb2• 2 years ago

Anki is commonly used by Rubik's Cube enthusiasts who want to memorize lots of algorithms. You can do basic methods with just a few algorithms, but people use Anki when you want to memorize hundreds.

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

I actually looked into Anki recently, my idea being:

instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media during downtime, why not memorize poems and great song lyrics?

The issue is: I'm sick and tired of apps that want your web credentials. I want an app that doesn't share anything about me. Completely local.

I have to admit, I haven't searched on Play Store for one.

rpearl• 2 years ago

The issue is: I'm sick and tired of apps that want your web credentials. I want an app that doesn't share anything about me. Completely local.

Anki does not require your web credentials, so it's very well suited for you!

You can create an account if you want to sync your decks between computers or to your phone. It is not necessary or required.

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

Excellent. Thanks.

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

You can also run your own sync server so you can get the benefit of multi-device syncing without needing to use the free provided service.

https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html

david_allison7• 2 years ago

AnkiDroid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.ichi2.anki/

From the F-Droid description:

Opt-in synchronization uses the non-free AnkiWeb service by default, but this can be changed in the settings to use, for example, an instance of the unofficial Anki Sync Server).

Opt-in / off-by-default crash reporting will send data to a private / AnkiDroid open source team controlled crash reporting server if enabled. This data is only used to help fix crash bugs.

Opt-in / off-by-default analytics will send data to Google Analytics via an an open-source implementation of the analytics API if enabled. This data is only used to focus developer efforts on popular features.

zora_goron• 2 years ago

I used Anki quite a bit in med school, where it’s extremely popular. Admittedly, it took me a couple years to fully buy in to it as a tool for cramming hundreds of facts, especially coming from an academic background (computer science) where memorizing facts at a high rate was not a huge emphasis at all.

After using it for a while though, I began to value how the quick recall encouraged by the system actually seemed to /enhance/ my deeper understanding of concepts, rather than replace it (I wrote a short post about this a couple years ago [0]).

[0] https://samrawal.substack.com/p/on-the-relationship-between-...

xbar2• 2 years ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. This confirms my bias in the deep value of anki.

colordrops• 2 years ago

I've put cards into Anki on several occasions and somehow when I come back after a few months they've disappeared in one way or another. Fool me once.

watwut3• 2 years ago

I tried to use Anki a while ago, but stopped. I felt like Anki is trying to control my life while I could not control it. It was too easy to make strategic mistake that would affect your workload in an uncontrollable way a week or month later.

For example, if you have time or are bored today and do some extra cards, your workload month later goes up. Except that month later you might be tired and not have time. And if you skip a day or dont do everything, the next day your workload goes up by twice ... and a week later too and a month later too for the same batch of cards.

kylegalbraith• 2 years ago

Been using Anki for years for more advanced language learning. I usually keep notes of words or phrases that come up during my day to day living in France that are new to me (or used a way I’m less familiar with). I research their construction/uses and throw them in an ongoing study deck I review every morning.

It’s really helped me gain a deeper understanding of the language and feel more confident in conversations.

thinkingofthing• 2 years ago

Shameless plug: I'm working on www.flashka.ai , a platform that solves a bunch of painpoints I and many others have had with flashcards.

I've used Anki and found it amazing, but it got to the point where making flashcards was too time consuming and couldn't keep up with them.

Mid-last year I found my brother having the same problem and realised after playing with GPT how effective it was at generating flashcards. Not perfect, but good enough to save many hours of writing them.

Now with Flashka we have started re-thinking the medium a bit more and try to make a great study-tool out of it

kazinator8• 2 years ago

I've only ever used Anki for some heavy editing of decks for use with AnkiDroid.

AnkiDroid is a separate, compatible implementation of Anki, for Android only, which uses local data.

jjjjj55555• 2 years ago

I'm an Anki fanatic. I use it about 1.5-2 hours per day.

It has completely changed how I approach the topic of learning. I've used it to study Spanish, Italian, Network engineering, AI, Art history, world history, and US history. It's made me much smarter than I was before using it.

Unfortunately it can be time consuming. A big part of it is not just studying cards, but creating cards that are actually well-crafted.

It's also key to understand that it isn't for learning things that you don't know, but rather for memorizing things that you've already learned.

mderazon2• 2 years ago

I have weekly Portuguese classes in Skype. During the lesson, when there's a word I don't know, the teacher explains and writes it in the chat.

After each class, I take these words and put them in Anki. However, I feel that this is not a great system, a lot of times I need the context of the conversation, the word needs to be in a sentence or sometimes I would prefer the reverse card (English and Portuguese on the back)

Any recommendations for using Anki for learning languages that is not the basic word-translation pair ? I thought about incorporating Chatgpt in the process, and dump the chat history but I am not sure what would be a good system.

marvel_boy• 2 years ago

Yes, just writing down the word-translation pair is not useful at all. To add a little context helps, for example use app , like Linguee or similar ,that adds phrases when then context makes sense.

mderazon2• 2 years ago

Nice site, I will try and see if I can integrate it into my flow somehow and give it words and get back sentences to put in Anki

wodenokoto• 2 years ago

You can ask Anki to also generate reverse cards.

But yes, word only cards are good in the beginning when you are learning only the most basic nouns and verbs but you quickly need sentences.

I’m sure there are plenty of online dictionary services which can do some sort of Portuguese sentence search for you.

ikesau• 2 years ago

Cloze cards also work well for this sort of thing, I think. Though they're easy to mass produce and create an overwhelming amount of revision, so be careful.

You may not have noticed, but there's also a reverse card type that only requires one note but adds two cards to your deck.

There are lots of people who have a similar intuition on the ChatGPT thing but none that I've seen create cards as good as the ones you could make yourself. Using ChatGPT as a dynamic pen pal is probably the better way to incorporate it into your language learning.

tempaccount12342• 2 years ago

My prompt to ChatGPT is to give me the 50 most common words for a given topic with translation and an example sentence (plus translation) in CSV format. Which quickly gives me a handful of usable flash cards.

studley3• 2 years ago

I've found Anki useful for focusing piano practice. Each piece of music I have worked on over the years has a few tricky bars in it. Before Anki, I was really bad at remembering which bars I was bad at in each piece, and would tend to practice the bars I already know how to play, which is pleasant to do.

Today, I have one deck, which has a flashcard for each set of tricky bars from all the pieces I've worked on. Now when I sit down to practice the piano, I just load up that deck, and those bars are what I practice, and I grade myself on each flashcard to indicate how quickly I need to re-practise those particular tricky bars.

I've done this 5+ year now, and I'm impressed at how good the default algorithm seems to be at effectively ordering my piano practice sessions.

rossant• 2 years ago

Wow nice, thanks for the tip! I'd never have thought of using spaced repetition for piano practice, sounds like great advice.

fudged71• 2 years ago

I saw someone saying the exact same thing for practicing tying knots.

There’s something there. Physical skills learned with spaced repetition.

degosuke2• 2 years ago

I was just wondering how to apply anki for learning guitar tabs. Can you please share a sample of one of your piano cards?

studley3• 2 years ago

For the "front", I give a title like "Sonata K.545 - The turn". And then the "back" is a screenshot of a few bars (usually between 2 and 5 bars). If those bars happen to be towards the end of a line, I'll also include a screen shot of the clef (left-hand side), so I know the key!

When I am using the deck, on each card, I immediately hit the "space" key to show the back (because I am not using the deck to "memorize"). I practice the few bars on the screenshot, and then when I am bored (usually after a minute or two), I grade myself, by hitting the most relevant button (Again, Hard, Good, Easy), which gives the algorithm the info it needs to know when it should show me those bars to me again.

The deck works great on a PC, iPad or phone. Piano Practice in your pocket at all times!

sodality2• 2 years ago

No one has mentioned it yet, so I'll drop this alternative: https://mochi.cards/

Much prettier than Anki, has a simpler algorithm that doesn't require rating difficulty, and has lots of the same features. I'm a subscriber just because of the cloud sync - wish I could self-host but I'm happy to support the developer.

KingMob• 2 years ago

I use Mochi too. It's much nicer-looking.

markusl2ll2• 2 years ago

Anki has AnkiWeb for cross device sync and (supposedly, haven't tried) has self-hosting.

peter_d_sherman• 2 years ago

Looks really cool!

You know what I would like to see?

First, I'd love Anki / Anki Flashcards to work as a smartphone Android app.

Second, I'd love to see some way to for users to globally share their flash card decks with other users.

Third, I'd love to see a site where someone could search for the decks created by other users.

Forth, it should be permissible for users to charge very smallish amounts of money for their flash decks, and/or share them for free. Their choice!

Anyway, looks really cool and I wish Anki a lot of luck!

bbno42• 2 years ago

hi bestie...

(1) there are multiple apps on all phones (2) this is already a thing https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks (3) this is the same as (2), are you an AI? (4) it is permissible.

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

AnkiDroid for Android works well, I used it for a while when I didn't have an iPad (old one had died, had an Android tablet collecting dust so switched to it).

bbno4 already pointed you to the shared decks.

Some people do sell decks. The main issue with that business model is it's entirely trust-based. The decks have no form of DRM or anything, they're just sets of cards and media that get imported so can be freely passed around once purchased. But some people do sell them.

graypegg• 2 years ago

I have Anki to thank for helping me study a language I now speak in every day. What an insanely well scoped, well made, simple tool.

ListeningPie• 2 years ago

Anki deck is one of the first if not the first spaced repetition tool. What do they do to remain relevant after all these years, ain't broke don't fix it, or is there more?

umanwizard• 2 years ago

It’s not the first; it’s basically an open-source clone of Supermemo.

Tomte• 2 years ago

Not even close. Anki came out 2006, SuperMemo's first version came out 1987!

wirrbel• 2 years ago

Everyone should be aware that someone hijacked the Anki name, so there is the genuine anki project and some copycat SaaS anki service with mobile apps in the app stores using the same name

dtornabene• 2 years ago

I did not know this, and recommended someone recently install from the app store and it was $25. Makes a lot more sense now.

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

The $25 one on the app store is probably the actual one. The creator of Anki has only monetized on iOS/iPadOS (one app, works on both) with a $25 one-time purchase. It's free on all other platforms it's available on (AnkiDroid is not his project, but is compatible and is also free), including on the web. His syncing service is free to use.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493... <- the legitimate one

david_allison7• 2 years ago

AnkiMobile is legit and is a $25 one-time purchase on iOS.

All other platforms are free, including AnkiWeb, which can be used on iDevices

nequo• 2 years ago

This is confusing to me. The GitHub repo[1] links to the AnkiWeb website[2] which offers the $25 iOS app as one of the download options. In what way was Anki hijacked here?

[1] https://github.com/ankitects/anki

[2] https://apps.ankiweb.net/

afiodorov• 2 years ago

I'm a big fan of spaced repetition, though I've hung up my hat with it for now. My journey with spaced repetition is a bit of a throwback - think pre-smartphone days, armed with SuperMemo on my trusty iPAQ hx4700. Picture this: a 19-year-old me, fresh in England for university studies, diligently working through English lessons on the Tube to and from work. Back then, I was convinced I'd settled in England for good, despite my English being a bit of a work in progress.

In hindsight, I'd tell my younger self to chill out and remember that learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint.

SuperMemo was a game-changer for me, boosting my memory like nothing else. It's like when you're coding in a language you haven't used in ages – things are on the tip of your tongue, but you're not quite sure. Is it len(arr), arr.length, arr.length(), or... darn it, is it size? sizeof? Space repetition solves this problem for good!

For my graduate math exams, SuperMemo was my secret weapon. I'd jot down all the proofs I needed to memorize and challenge myself to write them out. It worked wonders – I aced those exams. But interestingly, it wasn't about memorizing the proofs word for word; it was more about getting the structure and the key tricks down pat. In my practice runs, I'd often take shortcuts because who has the time to write everything out in full detail?

Then came Anki for my Spanish adventures. Nowadays, I'm dabbling in Portuguese but have given Anki and spaced repetition the cold shoulder. Why, you ask? Well, I'm a firm believer that if rapid recall is your goal, spaced repetition is your best friend. But most language learners don't use it. Are they missing a trick, or do they just not fancy efficiency? What stops them from optimizing their learning? I can only guess. As for myself, I've ditched it because, let's face it, reviewing cards over and over can be a snooze-fest. The most fun part about spaced repetition was creating the decks. Now, I'm learning Portuguese purely for the joy of it and don't mind how long it takes. I immerse myself in interesting content in Portuguese, occasionally revisiting something I've learned with a quick Google search. I'm perfectly fine with not reaching fluency quickly. After all, there's more to life than optimizing every bit of it!

guytv2• 2 years ago

I've been using Anki for around two years to learn Arabic vocabulary. It's an excellent tool that has helped me remember and continuously recall thousands of words. Some strategies I've found particularly effective are:

- Focusing on memorizing short sentences or phrases instead of isolated words. - Regularly adding new words, at least weekly, to keep the learning process engaging and not monotonous. - Including only words that I actually come across and learn in my daily life, which significantly aids in retention—possibly because I can recall the context in which I first heard them. - Installing AnkiDroid on my phone to make the most of idle times like commuting or waiting in lines for practice.

EasyMark• 2 years ago

if you want to make a list you need to add an empty line between each "-"

- line 1

- line 2

- line 3

hintymad3• 2 years ago

Flash card may be good for memorizing lots of stuff in a short time, but I find using flash card is incredibly boring. If we manage to learn things in long term, and we always should, there's always a more fun, more effective, and more efficient way to remember than paced reminder with flash card. For instance,

  - A new language: Comprehensive Input. Basically immersive studying with tons of reading, watching, and interaction. Given youtube and streaming services and low-cost online tutoring, immersive studying is so affordable now. Language is all about the right intuition in the right context, which flash card can't offer any way.  

  - STEM. This is an easy one. God forbid one should rely on flash card to memorize any STEM topic. STEM is all about intuition and understanding why and making connections. Solving problems, real or designed, is the most effective way. 

  - History and etc. Reading novels and biographies to learn a great deal of historical context, reading engaging books written by scholars to get accessible yet rigorous treatment of a specific topic. Anecdotally, I find alternative-history novels particularly engaging

dvfjsdhgfv• 2 years ago

Yeah I agree. Apart from very specific situations like learning for tests[0] flashcards are not the optimal method.

[0] And even then I'd risk saying that you can probably get better results creating a personalized ChatGPT-4 tutoring/examination session on any topic except arithmetic/anything involving computation.

hintymad3• 2 years ago

Yeah, even for a test that I need to cram, I’d use Feynman’s method, focus on core concepts, plus solve representative problem sets

offices• 2 years ago

Language is all about the right intuition in the right context

Huh? How about the tens of thousands of words you need to be able to recall and recognise in both directions in text and speech? You can't reason past irregular verbs and inconsistent rules about gender.

If you're learning a language like Chinese, you need to memorise the characters. If you're learning a romance language, you need to memorise the conjugation and genders.

Immersion doesn't replace dedicated study. The words that appear the least - which you're most likely to miss - are the ones with the highest entropy.

hintymad3• 2 years ago

I agree with you that one needs dedicated study. I just don’t think Anki card is necessary — it’s great if it works for you, of course. The repetition comes from tons of reading, writing, and listening, and speaking, all intense and dedicated.

Essentially, I’m advocating learning like natives. There is an interesting contrast too: Chinese schools used to teach Chinese kids English with an emphasis on mechanical repetition: grammars, memorizing words with Anki-like mechanisms, and etc. The result? Generations of students knew no more than 4000 words after 10 years of learning English, let alone writing or speaking fluently. In the past 20 years or so, though, their elite schools changed course, trying to teach their kids English like teaching them Chinese. The result has been astonishing. For the first time, a generation of Chinese students in even elementary school can use English fluently.

I’m also speaking from my own experience: I’m fluent in English, Chinese. Can read novels like Project Hail Mary in Spanish, and N3 in Japanese. I can attest that remembering words has never been a problem with intensive reading. The repetition in reading is just so contextual, natural, and more frequent than using Anki card. Listening and speaking can be a problem precisely because I don’t do them often enough.

kamaraju• 2 years ago

How to create "community curated" Anki decks?

For example, is it possible to create Anki decks and make them available on github so that if there are any mistakes, others might raise a merge request and once merged, everyone else can "pull" the latest deck?

edanm• 2 years ago

I've seen a community-managed Anki Shared deck, I think the "Ultimate Geography" deck is community-shared.

rickcarlino2• 2 years ago

I love how much attention spaced repetition gets on HN. Does anyone know if there are any communities for researchers or engineers working on spaces repetition and adjacent problems? /r/spacedRepetition is basicly dead. I really wish there was a place where I could discuss space repetition research with technical peers. if such a place does not yet exist and there is interest in creating one, please reach out I am easy to find. Maybe we could start a Discord server.

llelouch• 2 years ago

Maybe try the supermemo discord.

rickcarlino2• 2 years ago

That answers my question. Thank you!

Andrew1024• 2 years ago

You can check out https://old.reddit.com/r/Anki/

As much as I don’t like Reddit, I still find it better than Discord. Purely because it’s discoverable by the search engine

1024core3• 2 years ago

I wanted to fire up the AnkiDroid app on my Android device (which I installed a couple of years ago), and all I get is an error saying: "Please grant AnkiDroid storage permission to continue" and there's no way forward.

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

I suspect that's because it needs to store the cards and media. Are you unable to grant it storage permissions for some reason?

1024core3• 2 years ago

I don't see any "storage permissions" option. Android 14.

onewheeltom• 2 years ago

Anki is a great tool for learning.

toss1• 2 years ago

Does anyone know of a card set for FAA pilot's license? Seems like a near-ideal use...

Jtsummers13• 2 years ago

https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search=faa

No clue on quality.

ashconnor• 2 years ago

I've always been too lazy to compose flashcards. I ended up using Clozemaster for Spanish studying.

hamish-b• 2 years ago

This is massively popular in the medical student scene. They can't get enough of it, but also complain about it's restrictiveness at the same time. I wonder if there are any other platforms / if this is a space for disruption...

rmbyrro2• 2 years ago

What's restrictive about Anki?

martin82• 2 years ago

We are probably just a few years away until everyone carries some LLM on their body that sees and hears everything and it will give us contextual information about everything via some AR glasses. Humans will forget how to memorize things, most likely. I already have lost this till a long time ago. It got replaced with a skill of vaguely remembering where I can find that information again (A book? Google? Some social media platform? Somewhere on my disk? Some USB stick?)

rmbyrro2• 2 years ago

You will be unproductive (including when using an LLM as an assistant) and less capable of solving complex problems if you don't memorize stuff in a technical field like SWE.

nsonha• 2 years ago

Does good memory actually helps you advance in life? Or does it only make life more fun/interesting. I feel like remmbering things has never been an obstacle to my professional growth.

vwkd• 2 years ago

Interesting question. Good memory seems certainly beneficial. To me an even more interesting question is "memory of what?". What things are worth remembering? Is it worth to remember all 300 local plant species?

Maybe biology had good reasons to not evolve us with perfect memory. I found that over time I only remember the big picture and forget the details that make it up. And mostly that's fine! Usually, I only need the big picture. Like a math theorem, where once you understood it it's fine to forget the details of the proof since going forward you'll only need the big picture of the theorem.

Of course, sometimes life is not a simple straight line and might circle back to ask again for previous details. But then, how many details, how often does it happen? Maybe it's fine to forget and look it up again in those few cases?

Personally, I found little need for active memorization in real life. If something is worth remembering, it usually comes up multiple times, and after looking it up repeatedly, it tends to get remembered automatically.

Sure, sometimes real life poses constraints in time or exposure that hinder natural memorization (e.g. educational exams, remembering names, etc.) in which case active memorization may be useful. But these occasions seem to happen rather rarely over the whole course of a life.

For these reasons, I don't use Anki personally. Instead, I try to accept having to look things up again when it happens, if necessary repeatedly. No, it's not easy to not be disappointed at myself that I forgot again. But we can't avoid the pain - it's always there in some form. Either in the forgetting, or in the work to not forget.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172246

jkl5xx• 2 years ago

Is there an SRS app or Anki feature that takes into account your reaction time when answering a card? I've wanted to use Anki for things like speeding up mental arithmetic but Anki doesn't seem to have a feature for measuring and plotting progress on response times.

markusl2ll2• 2 years ago

Shamelessly plugging my org-mode extension to sync org entries as Anki notes https://github.com/eyeinsky/org-anki ;)

coldtea2• 2 years ago

Is there an Anki alternative with better UI/UX?

jagaerglad• 2 years ago

I have used anki for 4-5 years now, ~50% of days. I have a tiny worry that there is a "google effect"¹ of sorts associated with Anki. Before, in high school, I used to just read the chapter in the course book and then do well enough on the exam. In university, I also do well enough on the exams, however, I feel like I'm not learning the material/the bigger picture as well. For one, reading the book chapters takes so much more time when you're adding cards in between, watching a lecture video takes about twice the time of the video length. It's easy that the task becomes "creating cards" instead of "learning". I might be doing it wrong, adding too many cards, not reading the chapter and then summarizing it by adding cards. Still, the thought has struck me a couple of times, if I was braver I would stop using Anki and just do a lot of the practical stuff the knowledge would be useful for and let my brain do the filtering

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_effect

jefurii• 2 years ago

How does this app compare to Mnemosyne?

owenpalmer• 2 years ago

Anki journaling is a cool concept. You write your journal entry as the front of the card and the date on the back. I tried it a few years back, it was really cool to be able to think of an arbitrary date and recite what happened that day. I've since forgotten most of the events since I abandoned the review, but it was cool while it lasted.

PeterStuer• 2 years ago

Used it recently to create a neuropsychology cram set. I liked it overall.

Some things need work.

The import function is very fickle. Took me a long time to find a format that worked.

By default it will update existing cards when you import a new card with the same front-side text, even when they are in different sets. I feel the default there should be just creating the new card and leave the existing untouched, or else promt for an explicit disambiguating contextualization on both cards.

Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

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