A love letter to flashcards • Hacker News Board

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#111

Post by hintymad » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 12:31 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #84

hintymad wrote: post #50

For language learning, I wish there was an audio-first flashcard app that changes up the example sentences every time. Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. Anki just doesn't offer enough va…

> Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. You need to listen to people, ideally in actual conversations (I am conversational in Japanese, somewhere around N2). Spaced repetition won’t help you…

Yeah, large volume of comprehensible input is the key. It's just that the frequency of words is of Zipfian distribution, so I thought maybe flash cards could give me more frequent exposure of the important words in less time.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#112

Post by hintymad » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 12:35 AM UTC

nickitolas wrote: post #108

hintymad wrote: post #50

For language learning, I wish there was an audio-first flashcard app that changes up the example sentences every time. Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. Anki just doesn't offer enough va…

Have you looked at jpdb.io ? Iirc it has randomized example sentences

Looks very useful. Thanks!

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#113

Post by PandaRider » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 2:21 AM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #110

My problem with Anki/flashcards is that I hate doing it so much that their effectiveness is moot. If they help me learn at 100% speed and some other more enjoyable method helps me learn at 25% speed, I’ll pick the latter every time. Thankfully, I didn’t become a doctor or lawyer, I would have been screwed.

For most folks, the incentive of learning at 100% speed [1] is getting better grades in school. It's a huge ego boost to walk in to an exam hall with zero handwritten cheat sheets while everyone others have font 6 cheat sheets.

As a working adult, we hardly get this kind of ego boost unless we somehow know our colleagues salary. Even so, there are many other factors outside of knowledge storage that determine one's salary (e.g. feedback from teammates, number of closed sales etc)

[1] Actually, it's not 100% speed but 1 step back and 2 steps forward. Because the initial time and motivation cost is non-trivial.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#114

Post by jambalaya8 » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

Jtarii wrote: post #32

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is less useful for physics, math, and music since fluency is so much important. It is important for language acquisition too, but the language involves a lot more rote memorization than the above.

>it is less useful for physics, math, and music since fluency is so much important. I mean, you can put whatever you want on a flashcard. e.g "Derive the fundamental theorem of whatever", "Prove this theorem" etc. Also music has a extreme level of "stuff you just need to memorise".

Great for music vocabulary and symbols; pretty weird for learning scales and stuff.

Generally best for things you need to and can answer fast, and need to know more verbally.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#115

Post by PandaRider » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

AyanamiKaine wrote: post #94

Two really good modern books on how we actual learn are. 1. The ABCs of How We Learn by Daniel L. Schwartz 2. How Learning Happens 2nd by Paul A. Kirschner & Carl Hendrick I can really recommend them. Now back to flashcards and active recall. They are the secret sauce. People in the thread are saying that understanding is important, while I agree you should understand things its not THAT important. Important is that…

Thank you for the recommendations! The 2 books seem to be a little more detailed than the average general-audience book but not too intense and deep like a textbook.

Would definitely take a look!

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#116

Post by timr » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:34 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #111

timr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. You need to listen to people, ideally in actual conversations (I am conversational in Japanese, somewhere around N2). Spaced repetition won’t help you…

Yeah, large volume of comprehensible input is the key. It's just that the frequency of words is of Zipfian distribution, so I thought maybe flash cards could give me more frequent exposure of the important words in less time.

It's maybe more interesting if you understand the input, but it's really not that important at the very beginning. Hearing the language being spoken will train your ears to hear the sounds and the words, even if you only understand a fraction of the content. Later on, it's probably more important that you actually understand the majority of what you're hearing, but even at a high level, it can be valuable to zone out on a stream of incomprehensible audio content. I like to do this with news podcasts while cooking.

I got from zero to low N3 via a year of immersion, and I still remember the moment when I started to "hear words" in real-world conversation for the first time. It was very much a 0->1 transition, and happened almost entirely without my active participation.

Don't sweat it too much, is my point. Just listen to stuff.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#117

Post by moxza » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 9:14 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #50

For language learning, I wish there was an audio-first flashcard app that changes up the example sentences every time. Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. Anki just doesn't offer enough va…

Audio first is an interesting idea. As a fluent speaker who's always felt ashamed of his poor writing skills that's actually something that I would want as well.

As for building a learning flywheel. I had a working prototype pre-AI Python project in notebook format that set the foundation for how I thought Kanji learning (or any complex interrelated domain) should build on SRS.

My premise is we should learn by associating what you know with what you should know, based on frequency across the language, not some arbitrary deck… And you shouldn't have to waste effort self reporting, the app should give you similar options to guess from, then if you're wrong, you're wrong.

Do you think that would help you?

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#118

Post by mortsnort » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

I vibed this app a few weeks ago that lets you share highlighted text with it and it will provide you with an AI explanation of the text and the option to make an Anki flashcard.

I find the instant AI explanation less disruptive to flow than pasting a question into Claude/ChatGPT. I'm currently using it to help me read philosophy books and it's been really helpful.

I did a while back try to make an auto flash card creator that would create flashcards from a large body of text, but the card quality wasn't great and you're skipping an important step for recall of actually selecting the text you want to remember yourself.

https://github.com/mortsnort/Splain

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#119

Post by qodri58 » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #50

For language learning, I wish there was an audio-first flashcard app that changes up the example sentences every time. Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. Anki just doesn't offer enough va…

[flagged]

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#120

Post by msm_ » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #110

My problem with Anki/flashcards is that I hate doing it so much that their effectiveness is moot. If they help me learn at 100% speed and some other more enjoyable method helps me learn at 25% speed, I’ll pick the latter every time. Thankfully, I didn’t become a doctor or lawyer, I would have been screwed.

Just as a datapoint - I really like learning with Anki. If there was another method that would let me learn at 200% speed, I would pick Anki.

This is moot anyway, because most other learning methods require longer focus and are not possible to do while on the go, during short commute in a tram, or 3 minute wait in a queue, and much more.