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Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

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Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#91

Post by huhtenberg »

adrianN wrote: post #84
huhtenberg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repeat revenue makes it easier for me to make a living as an indie dev Of course it does! "And a pony." You have to realize that most people are exceptionally leery of subscriptions as they are open-ended long-term commercial relationships with some random entity. There gotta be rock-solid clear benefits for a subscription to be justified. There are none in your case. What you have is a product, not a service. A su…

I don't think domain specific packs are very useful for language learners. You need a rather large vocabulary just to follow a normal everyday conversation. Basic conversation and reading skill are the foundation upon which you can build. You need to consume and produce a large amount of material in your target language if you want to master it. Buying the language a few hundred words at a time won't get you to fluen…

Domain packs are not for those who are trying to master a language, but those who are starting up and merely need to pick up some day-to-day vocabulary quickly.

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#92

Post by [deleted] »

huhtenberg wrote: post #90
cabaalis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I googled "And a Pony" and it looks like one of the first uses of it is from a coding horror page in 2006 where the guy is asking all websites to scale down properly for a phone and then scale up properly for a desktop. He's then ridiculed because asking such a thing from websites would be obviously impossible. (Remember: 2006.) It is now of course expected everywhere. I just think that's interesting in the contex…

That's just a general expression. It's certainly older than 2006 and its context is not related to the IT at all, e.g. see https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70640/meaning-of...

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#93

Post by bko »

How much effort is it to add a new language? My wife is trying to learn Serbian using spaced repetition and had an app to create her own flash cards with her own pictures and sounds, but it's very laborious

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#94

Post by seren »

bko wrote: post #93

How much effort is it to add a new language? My wife is trying to learn Serbian using spaced repetition and had an app to create her own flash cards with her own pictures and sounds, but it's very laborious

Have you heard about Memrise? It is site/mobile app dedicated to learn new language using SRS.

Apart from official content, most of the content is contributed by bilingual users. So I don't know the quality/accuracy of them, but the result is that they have lots of courses.

https://www.memrise.com/courses/english/serbian/

It is a bit hard to pick up grammar or conversationnal skills but to learn some vocabulary it is great.

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#95

Post by mikestew »

cakedoggie wrote: post #67

Um, so we can advertise our apps on hackernews now? Cool.

Yes, in the fourteen days since you created your account, you might not have noticed that “Show HN” is quite common. I don’t know what the guidelines are, but perhaps they are outlined in the FAQ.

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#96

Post by bko »

seren wrote: post #94
bko wrote: post #93

How much effort is it to add a new language? My wife is trying to learn Serbian using spaced repetition and had an app to create her own flash cards with her own pictures and sounds, but it's very laborious

Have you heard about Memrise? It is site/mobile app dedicated to learn new language using SRS. Apart from official content, most of the content is contributed by bilingual users. So I don't know the quality/accuracy of them, but the result is that they have lots of courses. https://www.memrise.com/courses/english/serbian/ It is a bit hard to pick up grammar or conversationnal skills but to learn some vocabulary it is…

I haven't heard of it but will definitely check it out. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#97

Post by kendallpark »

FreakyT wrote: post #64
kendallpark wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually had it in mind to create something like this myself -- a mobile-first, nicer-designed version of Anki. This is also my current project. Although not mobile first. I use Anki a lot and personally find the UI to be insufferable.

100% this. I solely use the unofficial AnkiDroid port because it's leagues beyond the awful desktop app. Somewhat related: a lot of its horribleness comes from the fact that the UI is written with QT, which is equally horrible for Windows and Mac, and basically okay for Linux as long as your DE is KDE.

> a lot of its horribleness comes from the fact that the UI is written with QT

I would agree with this. It also doesn't appear that much thought went into how the application should flow. It really feels like a smattering of UI components were picked out because they could accomplish the goal at hand without much thought as to what would optimize the user experience. For example, the way you browse through cards leaves much to be desired. Even stuff like the size of the buttons when you're reviewing cards. It DOES feel like the kit used to handle the GUI limits the application.

One thing that I think Anki got right (and I got wrong in my first iteration of a spaced-rep app) is doing away with the visual metaphor of a card. The reason you put information on a back of a real-life flash card is so you can review the question without seeing the answer. The answer is obfuscated, but readily available (you don't have to go look it up). There is NO reason to keep the metaphor alive in an app. It is actually less optimal to animate a card flipping over when you want to see the answer. It is better for the answer to simply appear underneath the question so you can easily reference each aspect.

Re: Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS

#98

Post by wingerlang »

mikestew wrote: post #95
cakedoggie wrote: post #67

Um, so we can advertise our apps on hackernews now? Cool.

Yes, in the fourteen days since you created your account, you might not have noticed that “Show HN” is quite common. I don’t know what the guidelines are, but perhaps they are outlined in the FAQ.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

> Show HN is a way to share something that you've made on Hacker News.

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