41–50 of 78 posts
First of all, big kudos for not missing a single day. When I used flashcards in the past, missing even a couple of days led to an avalanche of cards to review. Since you’ve been so consistent and are using your own software, have you experimented with different resurfacing rates? Did you notice a material difference in recall?
As someone who did about 51k in 2025, oh my goodness how would you possibly have time for 300k?
Interesting to see the stats here. My total active library size is about the same as the author's (~50k cards), yet I performed less than 100k reviews this past year. That said, my overall retention is a good bit lower (~83%). Wouldn't have expected a 6% difference to make for a 3x higher review load!
2. A lot of my cards were also made in 2025 (and 2024), so I'm probably much farther to the left of you on the learning curve, on average.
Does doing this have utility? What problem does it solve? Years ago, I memorized 1034 digits of pi just to see what it felt like (reciting pi from memory felt like walking through a forest at night without bumping into any trees). So, there was some value in that experience. I wonder what this guy gets out of it?
2. I like trivia competitions.
3. I like making and using my own software.
4. Memorizing facts is an underrated way to become a better software engineer. Not the best way or even close to the best way, but an underrated way!
5. It enriches my experience of the world (I plan to write more about this soon).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they just enjoy memorizing things. Roughly the equivalent of meeting someone who runs 10 miles a day. They enjoy it and it has some benefit to their life as well, even though they are probably far past the point of diminishing returns.
More precisely, enjoys memorizing things but isn't good at it. Professonal quizzers can absorb huge amounts of information but typically don't use flashcards. OP is grinding thousands of cards a day to get to the same level - worthy of respect!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but typically don't use flashcards Can you elaborate on this? I watch an unhealthy amount of University Challenge and I assumed that the vast majority of contestants would use flash cards as a trivia retention tool. Most people I've met who need to rely on large amounts of accurate but relatively dispersed knowledge (law students, say, or specific historical professions) use flash cards in one way or another. It su…
I highly doubt professional or even amateur quizzers wouldn't use flashcards. Especially armed with a SRS algo, it would be the most efficient way to learn to quickly recall the type of info needed for quiz bowls
> The prompt of my most-missed card (39 misses in 2025) is: Merrily We Roll Along (the musical) is based on a 1934 play by what two people > [...] But, ChatGPT and Gemini both tell me that these effects are not statistically significant, despite having pretty large sample sizes. Imagine he instead learned how to calculate staristical significance instead so he didn't have to believe AI guesswork.
Yes, different strokes I guess but I can't imagine just using flashcards for random information. And you'd think someone who wrote(maybe vibe coded?) a flashcard program would be calculate that by hand.
I sympathise. I did ~200k reviews in Anki and no idea how many in Renshuu in 2025 for language learning: German, Spanish and Japanese... and I think I got into Anki hell. For a long time, Anki was really useful for me, it pushed my Spanish and German forward, but now I plan to decrease the number of reviews significantly. I hope to spend no more than 30 minutes per day of flashcards, and the rest of time on immersion…
> My correct-answer rate is approximately 89% That sounds like incredibly boring way to spend time. I'd aim for something like 20% at most. What's the fun in being asked things you already know?
1. As others have said, the idea is to study something before you forget.
2. It's hard to predict when you're going to forget something, so you do wind up studying a bunch of stuff before you really have to. It's a limitation of prediction (and also of the technology as developed so far).
3. It really is pleasant to work to recall things even when you succeed at it. It does "freshen them up" in your memory. And sometimes just the experience of seeing a fact can be pleasant. (A lot of us review familiar things for the joy of it in other domains--movies, etc.)
I read the author's attempt to explain why memorization is important, and found myself unconvinced. Of all the things we consider to be "intelligence", memorization of facts seems like one of the least valuable in the Internet-era. That said, I am open to hear some counter-arguments (pro-memorization). Of course, if you simply enjoy the process of memorizing facts, then no explanation is needed - it is entertainment…
Even in the Internet age, getting the latency from "fast" to "effectively zero" has a lot of value for staying in flow, synethesizing information, etc. Your memory is the ultra-low-latency fact retrieval system you always have. No, you definitely don't want to use it for everything, but it definitely does complement modern tools in important ways.