Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

How many languages that are not English have you learned?

- people routinely working on systems far too complex for them to ever understand fully, and which often change completely on the timescale of weeks or months

- all the relevant data on the web in a format (like error messages or function names) that's easy for google to index, and easy for users to type

- people sitting in front of internet-connected computers anyway, and sufficient time slop that the team doesn't need an instantaneous answer

When I was knee-deep in water at an archaeological dig 15 years ago and my professor called out "What species of tree is that by your knee?", or when I was working on the catwalk last week and my lead called over "Check that the instrument in front of you is safe", googling it would have been completely infeasible, for several reasons. They'd just replace me with someone who knows what they're doing.

> Learn the conceptual framework, and you'll remember the details by partial reconstruction as you need them.

When I took organic chemistry, they taught the special cases of each reaction type first, and then generalized them at the end of the year. When I took engineering physics, they made us start with the generalized form first, and then we had to derive the specifics as needed. At the time, I was frustrated by the chemistry approach (why didn't you tell us there was a simpler form?!), but 20 years later, I remember a lot more chemistry than physics (even though my grades in physics were much better). I might be able to fumble through an SN2 reaction if I needed to, but I'm sure I couldn't do anything at all useful with Maxwell's Equations.

One big problem of SRS is that it gets unwieldy with larger chunks of information. SRS is good for vocabulary, bad for medical texts. The much bigger problem is that it takes an unpractical amount of calendar time. If you have three months, yes you can SRS a few hundred words. If you have a week and want full recollection at the end, you'll still repeat the list of words a couple dozen times and SRS makes no difference.

Another problem is the time it takes to prepare a database or a set of paper cards. By the time I prepare a database from a book I could probably read the thing twice or more times.

For exams that require recital of information (for example medical or law exams) mnemonic techniques like the Loci method (also called memory palace) are much more reliable and more practical.

You can learn words in foreign language using SRS and then use those words in conversations, when reading, watching a movie, etc.

I don't see any value in the purist approach your propose.

Also:

> So when we use this sort of spaced repetition we're trying to artificially "warm up" the cache in our brains.

No idea what this means. It is no more artificial than actively seeking out people to talk to just because you want to learn a new language, or forcing yourself to prove theorems just to better remember a mathematical concept.

I respectfully disagree here. After using the methods/strategies in the Fluent Forever book/videos/etc... (of which SRS is but one), while this strategy will work, its ultimately a longer road than necessary.

Kids don't get the chance to learn any other way than by observation and learning what not to do by inference. They're also very willing to make mistakes to tune their understanding. Adults tend not to be, taking the kids learning strategy as an adult is both ignoring the fact that you can take advantage of being an adult that can take in information differently, AND can speak to natives in a more structured way to much more easily learn grammar.

You'll still need to practice with native speakers no doubt, but knowing/learning words based on their frequency in the target language is something that you as an adult can take advantage of that kids realistically have to infer.

Immersion is great, but isn't ultimately a realistic option for most adults.