Live data from Hacker News

An open source web-based flashcard studying system

github.com

51–60 of 103 posts

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#51
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anki isn't for everybody" But I didn't see a single sentence about how this is different from Anki and why? Why do you want to reinvent the wheel when Anki is good enough?

Haven't yet seen this tool, but here's a quick answer. A few years ago, after skimming through the docs, I gave up on Anki because it seemed too complicated . I was using SuperMemo back when it was a DOS (and later Windows 3) application, I consider myself a fairly sophisticated user (e.g. I have a good expertise on LaTeX, even coauthored a textbook, I know Emacs very well, also authored a textbook), I've been a hobb…

I can relate to this. I had fond memory of SuperMemo on DOS and wrote a little terminal tool “lrn” inspired by it: https://github.com/krychu/lrn

I acknowledge it’s simple, runs on terminal only and lacks bells and whistles. But this is also probably why I use it so much.

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#52
> Inspired by the larger sites that are now charging for core functionality, Scholarsome intends to be a drop-in replacement for any study workflow.

What „larger sites“ does it refer to? All the comments here are about Anki but this seems to target something else?

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#55

Not sure if the site's being HN'd or not, but the signup failed and then when I resubmitted the form it said my username was already taken. Tried a password reset just in case, but nothing came through for that either. Lots of error 401's, 409's and 500's in the network inspector.

Same for me. An error during signup followed by username already taken followed by no password reset email.

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#56
Are flashcard system actually more efficient than other ways of knowledge memorization? It never worked for me,I am curious to whether I'm the weird one or if there's anything that can back help me understand if I'm using the system work.

To me, just for the sake of having a data point down, summarisation in writing is how I remember stuff.

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#57

I use anki right now. I mean this question in good faith, is there a reason for me to switch? I'm happ with anki, but I'm open to being sold. Relatedly: Can I pay for this? Anki won't accept money, and it makes me nervous that one day the software is going to change and become unusable. I don't know how ankiweb can afford to host decks at no charge.

Anki is supported via the paid iOS app. It used to accept donations but the payment processors kept causing problems.

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#58
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anki isn't for everybody" But I didn't see a single sentence about how this is different from Anki and why? Why do you want to reinvent the wheel when Anki is good enough?

Haven't yet seen this tool, but here's a quick answer. A few years ago, after skimming through the docs, I gave up on Anki because it seemed too complicated . I was using SuperMemo back when it was a DOS (and later Windows 3) application, I consider myself a fairly sophisticated user (e.g. I have a good expertise on LaTeX, even coauthored a textbook, I know Emacs very well, also authored a textbook), I've been a hobb…

Anki is badly designed and inefficient, largely I think because it was the first project for its author. It's also become venerable and battle-tested, and features have been developed through the needs of a very large userbase.

I don't think that anyone denies that Anki could be a lot better if it were completely rewritten with the experience of having had Anki for years and knowing its pain points. You just have to have a plan, best based in analysis of Anki (and SuperMemo) to do that.

> There's definitely space for an easy to use SRS out there.

I think there's definitely even space for a hard to use SRS that's easier to deal with. But it's got to start by covering at least 80% of what Anki does already or it's not worth switching.

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#59

Are flashcard system actually more efficient than other ways of knowledge memorization? It never worked for me,I am curious to whether I'm the weird one or if there's anything that can back help me understand if I'm using the system work. To me, just for the sake of having a data point down, summarisation in writing is how I remember stuff.

I promise that turning your summary into flashcards and looking at them for the next couple of years will help you remember that stuff longer.

Re: An open source web-based flashcard studying system

#60
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anki has more features at the moment, but we’re hoping to go beyond its capabilities while addressing its shortfalls.

Feature count won’t make it better than Anki, but user experience will.

Although features around moving cards between decks, drawing from multiple decks, allowing tranches of cards to be released based on other sets of cards reaching maturity, etc. would get me to switch. I've been an Anki user for a few years, and the inability for Anki users to do simple things easily (or sometimes at all) is frustrating.

Having more than a few decks also slows everything in Anki to a crawl. The community has responded by dumping everything into an uberdeck (killing reusability, which gets sourappled), when we could instead be coming up with theories on how best to juggle multiple decks to maximize learning.

Post reply on HN