Totally agree. I also think Anki is great, but as a tool to improve the speed and quality of my software development? pretty useless I'd say. That's like tryin

Totally agree. I also think Anki is great, but as a tool to improve the speed and quality of my software development? pretty useless I'd say. That's like trying to write better novels by focusing on improving your typing speed. Sure it might help a little, but it's kind of missing the point. I consider myself a maybe 5x android developer, and that has nothing at all to do with memorizing APIs or definitions of terms, or who invented what, (that's what the IDE and Google / Stackoverflow is for). I think I'm a better programmer _because_ I don't rely on memory. I rely on things like architectures, conventions, tools and tests (and also sometimes informed hunches), I don't work when I'm tired, if I get stuck I know when to take a break, I take care when naming things, I take a sceptical approach to anything that is recommended by Google (I know that sounds weird but the engineers at Google Android are occasionally brilliant but inexperienced and are learning on the job), I don't take stupid short cuts that come back to bite the team, etc. Now, for convincing a client you know what you're talking about, or convincing a recruiter that you're a "rock star", or winning a "who's smarter" competition with an auditor? Sure. Remembering facts might work.