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Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

apps.ankiweb.net

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Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#41
For all you people who have used Anki or other SRS for many years: how do you get over the problem of being bored by it? Or does that not happen to you?

Though I have not used Anki, I used a similar SRS for learning Chinese - the flashcards built in Pleco, but no matter how often I try to use it, I never last longer than 5-10 days, I just get bored by it. Also, no matter how I try to adjust the algo, I have the feeling that I am constantly over- or underwhelmed, no flow for me.

In the meanwhile I love learning, no matter if flashy (e.g. Duolingo) or traditional (from books) or something in between (a class), but I just never got the hang of SRS, though so many people recommend it.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#42
Anki is a great software, but unfortunately it is quite difficult to install on Linux systems. Almost all packages on major distros are by now years out of date or kicked out, because Anki changed its build systems so many times, that the existing package maintainers simply dropped it: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/issues/1378

Nowadays, the Anki version in Ubuntu is from 2019! The snaps are also hopelessly outdated.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#43

Long-term user of Anki ~ 13-14 yrs, with mostly language learning focus. It’s good; but out of the box, I find that most users barely tap into its utility. It’s templating engine, ability to shape card content and formatting via JS and CSS put it in a league above most other SRS applications. (With the caveat that it’s easy to waste a lot of time on inconsequential card-tweaking…) A lot of people complain that it use…

I think the issue of inferior SRS algorithm is at least partly alleviated by the existence of FSRS.

... https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The... ...

I'm not sure I believe we understand our own learning/memory anything like enough for this not to be total pseudoscience? Reminds me of A Beautiful Mind.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#44

Anki is a great software, but unfortunately it is quite difficult to install on Linux systems. Almost all packages on major distros are by now years out of date or kicked out, because Anki changed its build systems so many times, that the existing package maintainers simply dropped it: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/issues/1378 Nowadays, the Anki version in Ubuntu is from 2019! The snaps are also hopelessly outdat…

The package on Flathub[1] seems to incorporate the most recent version.

[1] https://flathub.org/apps/net.ankiweb.Anki

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#45

Anki is a great software, but unfortunately it is quite difficult to install on Linux systems. Almost all packages on major distros are by now years out of date or kicked out, because Anki changed its build systems so many times, that the existing package maintainers simply dropped it: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/issues/1378 Nowadays, the Anki version in Ubuntu is from 2019! The snaps are also hopelessly outdat…

Just to add another perspective, I use the anki package on apt/ubuntu and yum/fedora, and both repos work for me. I ran into one small issue on fedora that was really annoying, but it was fixable. The sync from the cloud worked on both

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#46
post #28

Weird, I was actually thinking of a related AskHN, that comments here are obviously now the place for. Is there anything similar people use for sort of general 'knowledge base' type things - like people use one big text file, or Obsidian, or Logseq, or Notion, or whatever - but with some kind of Anki-like reminder/retrieval rather than just deliberate searching to look something up? Or do people successfully use Anki…

There's an Obsidian plugin for Anki -- https://github.com/reuseman/flashcards-obsidian It connects with your Anki desktop app. You create notes in Obsidian in a specific format, and they get converted to Anki flashcards. This way your flashcard creation process becomes much easier if you already use Obsidian for note-taking.

Unfortunately, while super useful, that plugin is quite out-of-date. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't depending on what Obsidian/Anki version combination you use. If one of them updates, it breaks. I think I had to pin Obsidian to some older version to keep it working.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#48
Anki is unbeatable for acing any test with a bounded number of questions [1]. It's been successfully used by some top TV show contestants to remember thousands of words [2].

I've been using it recently to remember recipes and cooking facts, such as the time it takes to boil X vegetable, or the ingredients for some dish.

Apart from language learning and medicine, there's a lack of pre-built decks that you can use to learn topics. I'm building Python.cards [3] to apply spaced repetition to learn Python with pre-built decks, daily reminders, etc. to make it the most convenient.

[1] https://www.thediligentdeveloper.com/spaced-repetition-reall...

[2] https://www.esquire.com/es/tecnologia/a36913467/pasapalabra-...

[3] https://python.cards

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#49
post #33

I've been using Anki a bit to supplement my language learning. I built an Anki deck generator that makes emoji/tts/word flashcards! It's worked pretty well for me to get some better word recognition. https://flashcards.bpev.me

Nice! My feedback was going to be that I don't even know some of them in English (my native language) because it's just not clear to me what the emoji mix is supposed to mean, but I see that 'from emoji' is sort of the whole point, so that's not really helpful. I've been wanting to use something like Anki as a general purpose 'knowledge base'/reminder/learning system; if I do use Anki I'll certainly add this, cheers.

Thanks! Yaya... selecting what emojis to show has been challenging, trying to balance clarity with word usefullness. Also cuz sometimes I miss how different some specific emojis look on different OS; it can muddy the intended meaning for some platforms.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue of inferior SRS algorithm is at least partly alleviated by the existence of FSRS.

... https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The... ... I'm not sure I believe we understand our own learning/memory anything like enough for this not to be total pseudoscience? Reminds me of A Beautiful Mind .

I'm not really sure what you mean? It's been empirically validated to predict how you remember better than alternatives (or equal to SM-17) (essentially when it predicts that your % recall is below a certain threshold, it just shows you the card)
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