Live data from Hacker News

Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

ankisrs.net

21–30 of 141 posts

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#21
I use Anki almost every day (for language learning) and from a user interface it is a terrible piece of software. It is inconsistent and not at all intuitive, even simple tasks usually require looking up documentation or tutorials.

That being said it is still the best software out there that I've found for this type of thing. I hope something better comes along at some point.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#22

I use Anki almost every day (for language learning) and from a user interface it is a terrible piece of software. It is inconsistent and not at all intuitive, even simple tasks usually require looking up documentation or tutorials. That being said it is still the best software out there that I've found for this type of thing. I hope something better comes along at some point.

If you want to try an alternative, look at Mnemosyne:

http://mnemosyne-proj.org/

I use this daily for my foreign language studies. It has less features than Anki, but the interface is pretty clean, intuitive to use, and has a powerful plugin system. Plus, the whole thing is open source, written in Python, and highly extensible.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#23

Does anyone have experience learning JavaScript with Anki? I am still trying to figure out the best way to learn JS.

The best way to learn JS is very much the same as the best way to learn anything. If you don't know how to learn something effectively then no tool can help you.

What do I mean by knowing how to learn effectively?

* Understanding the basics (js is a dynamically typed scripting language)

* Understanding core concepts (in JavaScript, one core idea is prototypes. Another one is the keyword this which trips a lot of people up)

* Understanding all the connections (variables are actually object properties!)

* Asking a lot of questions

* etc

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#24

My friend and I have been using this for years. My friend took it pretty serious this year: http://rs.io/2014/04/05/anki-10000-cards-later.html It's really useful for courses in college, especially Language, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics for definitions, pronunciations, systems, etc. Math and Computer Science is a bit hard since a lot of that requires practice and it takes time to figure out how to structure those…

I've been using a similar method to learn some German vocabulary for about 8 months now (using Flashcards Deluxe, not Anki, though), and I could specially relate to the "Two-way connections" section of your friend's article. For example, my deck is currently German to English. As an experiment, once I reversed the deck for a while (making it English to German) and suddenly it became much harder. Maybe the solution is…

I am using memrise.com which works pretty well to learn some vocabulary. You can learn pre-made lists contributed by users, and does not require any set up.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#28
post #10

For people already using Anki, if there are any decks you can share, please post them in this thread. It could be useful for people just starting out. :)

It makes much more sense to share the decks through the built-in deck sharing system where they are accessible on http://ankiweb.net or in the desktop/mobile app.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#29

If you're interested in this you should also check out http://quizlet.com Not strictly SRS but much better UI, mobile apps, audio, etc.

There's also ProVoc for OS X which was great in its time, and still works, but has now abandoned:

http://www.arizona-software.ch/provoc/

But luckily it's been forked and now lives on as iVocabulary:

http://apps.chbeer.de/ivocabulary/

I don't know if it's strictly an SRS app or not? It's certainly smart though, and is available on OS X and iOS and has a web interface too.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#30

I use Anki almost every day (for language learning) and from a user interface it is a terrible piece of software. It is inconsistent and not at all intuitive, even simple tasks usually require looking up documentation or tutorials. That being said it is still the best software out there that I've found for this type of thing. I hope something better comes along at some point.

If you want to try an alternative, look at Mnemosyne: http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ I use this daily for my foreign language studies. It has less features than Anki, but the interface is pretty clean, intuitive to use, and has a powerful plugin system. Plus, the whole thing is open source, written in Python, and highly extensible.

Wow, I just installed mnemosyne, it looks so much simpler than Anki. I'll be giving it a run this weekend.
Post reply on HN