Hashcards: A plain-text spaced repetition system

With regards to cloze deletions the author writes:

> cloze deletions in Mochi are very verbose. [...] This is a lot of typing.

First, the numbering (1::) is optional. Secondly there are keyboard shortcuts, cmd+L to wrap in {{}} and cmd+1,2,3 to add numbering.

The point about note types is fair, and I may a similar function eventually, but I recommend most people to create no more than 10 cards a day. Any more and you risk getting overwhelmed with reviews. In the article the author shows an example of creating 4 (or more) cards for a single atomic element. This excessive card creation probably contributed more to the 1700 overdue cards than the algorithm (more on that later). If you really do want to create multiple cards like this you can use cloze groups. E.g. {{1::Helium}} (symbol: {{2::He}}) has atomic number {{3::2}}

Finally, the "biggest problem with Mochi". This is kind of a moot point now that Mochi has an FSRS option, but there are a lot of misconceptions in the article about the algorithm. First being that Mochi's algorithm is inferior to SM-2 because it is simpler, and that the rational for it being simpler is because "the user can reason about the algorithm more easily." I'm not sure where the author got that idea, maybe I mentioned it before as an advantage, but it's not the main reason. The main reason is that the additional complexity in SM-2 is actually detrimental in some subtle ways. [0] The author just assumed the algorithm was worse and gave up.

With regards to the forgetting multiplier the author states:

> If I forgot something after sixty days, I surely won’t have better recall in thirty.

But what is the evidence for this? The assumption here is that the knowledge was "completely lost". For the card to have gotten to 60 days in the first place, you must have remembered it previously after 30 days. Evidence show that reviews strengthen memory, not degrade it. Even FSRS does not completely reset the interval after a forget. I get that the author doesn't want to configure things, but lowering the multiplier to 0.2 for example seems a lot easier than building a brand new SRS flashcards app.

Criticisms aside I really do like the idea of hashcards. Plain text, offline, open source. It checks a lot of boxes that I personally look for in software and I'm happy to see more options in this space.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200926103540/https://massimmer...

In addition to "make me a prompt to go with photos of the school book word list that will output I can import to my tool"

Works pretty well and a lot faster than typing it all in by hand.

Kind of proves my point. Someone asked a question 8 years ago, that doesn't look like something that has any effect on adoption really.