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Nobody has commented on the suggestion to aid learning with Spaced Repetition Software - specifically the Anki open source program. Anybody try or use this tec

by nlh 14y ago

Nobody has commented on the suggestion to aid learning with Spaced Repetition Software - specifically the Anki open source program. Anybody try or use this technique? It looks interesting and sounds reasonable and effective. I took a peek at Anki but have to admit it looks messy (and the iOS app is $25, which is def. on the high end of the iOS pricing scale). I'd be curious to hear others' experience in this area...

invalidOrTaken 14y ago
I haven't used SRS for js specifically, but I've been using it lately to cement certain Ruby concepts. Best advice I can give is that it's totally worth it, but don't take shortcuts when authoring cards. Take the time to separate concepts into bite-sized, more simple (Rich Hickey simple, not "easy" simple) concepts, and write questions that elicit that knowledge. Also, Anki is free for both desktop (every OS) and Android.
conradcb 14y ago
I haven't used it for programming languages (though I intend to the next time I learn one), but I used it for my maths degree (for sit-down exam at the end of the year), and it seemed to be very effective. The danger is always that it can be time consuming to create the content for it. Anki does look a bit raw, but worked absolutely fine for me (though transferring LaTeX-ed decks between devices was a hassle). There's also memrise.com, which mostly focuses on languages, but allows users to create content on any subject. It's also more easily shareable there, I think. In any case, the science behind SRSs is good, and in my experience it helps a lot with memorisation!
jole 14y ago
Anki is great to recapitulate what you already know. At the moment, I'm trying to use it for learning new stuff. I am preparing for lpic-1 certification exams, and I use only Anki as tool to study. For now I'm really satisfied.
zimpenfish 14y ago
I'm trying to use Anki to learn various things and whilst it does seem to be working, some of the decks you can download could do with a firm hand on the layout / design tiller. e.g. the C one presents the code in an awful centred and line-broken fashion which completely obliterates the location of significant comments and the like. (But I believe the SRS people recommend you make your own decks as part of the process.)
- subpixel 14y ago
  I highly recommend the code syntax-highlighting extension to Anki: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/491274358 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/491274358 In a nutshell, pressing the button this extension adds to Anki either pastes the contents of your clipboard as syntax-highlighted code, or applies syntax-highlighting to the text you have selected. This makes code much, much easier to parse, especially when using Anki on a mobile device.
  - zimpenfish 14y ago
    I'm guessing that's not going to do much in the Anki iOS app though. On the plus side, checking the app to see if such an option exists found a bunch of options I didn't know about that will make my experience more pleasant. Ta.
blub 14y ago
The Anki business model is to give it out for free for all platforms and then exploit the iOS users. StickyStudy is cheaper and so far works fine with my < 200 element deck. Only problem I had is that it sometimes crashes after searching for a word and then clearing the search-box.
Ovid 14y ago
Spaced repetition has a pretty good history. If you want a free online alternative, check out memrise.com. They're pretty popular in the language learning community, but they cover a lot of areas and you can create your own. For example, here's there physics section: http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/physics/ http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/physics/
dnissley 14y ago
If you don't feel like buying the app up front (not knowing if you will find it useful) you can just use anki's web interface [1]. I find it much faster to enter the cards on my desktop/laptop using the keyboard and then sync them to my mobile devices anyway. 1 - http://ankiweb.net/ http://ankiweb.net/
tomku 14y ago
If you spend a lot of time making a good deck full of programming language facts, I'm sure that it works well enough. I don't think that it's any kind of substitute for sitting down and coding. I think that the core issue is that there are a lot of things you CAN memorize in order to make coding easier, but there are very few things that you MUST memorize in order to make coding possible. No matter how much you memorize, you're still going to end up sitting down to code and learning from your mistakes. That said, if you want to give it a shot, I'd suggest starting with the desktop version of Anki. Make your own deck, because making a deck is its own form of studying. Use it for a while, and if you feel that it's something that you want to invest more time in, get the mobile app. Oh, one other thing I'd like to mention about SRS. SRS techniques are designed to manage HUGE numbers of cards, ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands. If you have less than a hundred or so cards, it's just a really smart flash card system - you could review all the cards every couple days without much trouble. People who really get into SRS tend to use it for everything, because it's an easy way to integrate more knowledge into their existing knowledge-management framework. As such, you should be careful about recommendations for using it for one particular field. The people doing the recommending usually have lower friction regarding adding a couple hundred programming cards to their deck than you will as a beginner.
jeremyjh 14y ago
Sivers has written a full-length article about it before: http://sivers.org/srs http://sivers.org/srs I think he has some good points; you can definitely program a lot faster in a language in which you have memorized much of the standard library and the API/frameworks you are using heavily. I don't really think SRS has a place when it comes to learning a new language. To me it makes more sense once you are certain you are going to specialize in a language/platform. I am still yet to try it.
cotsog 14y ago
Also worth reading wrt to using SRS software to learn to code: http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html
praptak 14y ago
Anki works great for me but it is important to get its scope of usefulness. It's good for standalone facts, not interrelated concepts. This means it doesn't replace books nor practice. On the other hand it's a perfect complement to them. The way I use it is to just create a card or two for every useful trick, library function, command line option or whatever I encounter that looks interesting or useful. The area it worked best so far is git - I no longer fumble for that elusive option to 'log' or 'diff' that I know exists but I just cannot remember it because I use it just rarely enough to forget it between use cases. I do not create large decks upfront so I'm using it as a notepad rather than study book.

by nlh 14y ago

invalidOrTaken 14y ago

I haven't used SRS for js specifically, but I've been using it lately to cement certain Ruby concepts. Best advice I can give is that it's totally worth it, but don't take shortcuts when authoring cards. Take the time to separate concepts into bite-sized, more simple (Rich Hickey simple, not "easy" simple) concepts, and write questions that elicit that knowledge. Also, Anki is free for both desktop (every OS) and Android.

conradcb 14y ago

I haven't used it for programming languages (though I intend to the next time I learn one), but I used it for my maths degree (for sit-down exam at the end of the year), and it seemed to be very effective. The danger is always that it can be time consuming to create the content for it. Anki does look a bit raw, but worked absolutely fine for me (though transferring LaTeX-ed decks between devices was a hassle). There's also memrise.com, which mostly focuses on languages, but allows users to create content on any subject. It's also more easily shareable there, I think. In any case, the science behind SRSs is good, and in my experience it helps a lot with memorisation!

jole 14y ago

Anki is great to recapitulate what you already know. At the moment, I'm trying to use it for learning new stuff. I am preparing for lpic-1 certification exams, and I use only Anki as tool to study. For now I'm really satisfied.

zimpenfish 14y ago

I'm trying to use Anki to learn various things and whilst it does seem to be working, some of the decks you can download could do with a firm hand on the layout / design tiller. e.g. the C one presents the code in an awful centred and line-broken fashion which completely obliterates the location of significant comments and the like. (But I believe the SRS people recommend you make your own decks as part of the process.)

subpixel 14y ago
I highly recommend the code syntax-highlighting extension to Anki: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/491274358 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/491274358 In a nutshell, pressing the button this extension adds to Anki either pastes the contents of your clipboard as syntax-highlighted code, or applies syntax-highlighting to the text you have selected. This makes code much, much easier to parse, especially when using Anki on a mobile device.
- zimpenfish 14y ago
  I'm guessing that's not going to do much in the Anki iOS app though. On the plus side, checking the app to see if such an option exists found a bunch of options I didn't know about that will make my experience more pleasant. Ta.

blub 14y ago

The Anki business model is to give it out for free for all platforms and then exploit the iOS users. StickyStudy is cheaper and so far works fine with my < 200 element deck. Only problem I had is that it sometimes crashes after searching for a word and then clearing the search-box.

Ovid 14y ago

Spaced repetition has a pretty good history. If you want a free online alternative, check out memrise.com. They're pretty popular in the language learning community, but they cover a lot of areas and you can create your own. For example, here's there physics section: http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/physics/ http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/physics/

dnissley 14y ago

If you don't feel like buying the app up front (not knowing if you will find it useful) you can just use anki's web interface [1]. I find it much faster to enter the cards on my desktop/laptop using the keyboard and then sync them to my mobile devices anyway. 1 - http://ankiweb.net/ http://ankiweb.net/

tomku 14y ago

If you spend a lot of time making a good deck full of programming language facts, I'm sure that it works well enough. I don't think that it's any kind of substitute for sitting down and coding. I think that the core issue is that there are a lot of things you CAN memorize in order to make coding easier, but there are very few things that you MUST memorize in order to make coding possible. No matter how much you memorize, you're still going to end up sitting down to code and learning from your mistakes. That said, if you want to give it a shot, I'd suggest starting with the desktop version of Anki. Make your own deck, because making a deck is its own form of studying. Use it for a while, and if you feel that it's something that you want to invest more time in, get the mobile app. Oh, one other thing I'd like to mention about SRS. SRS techniques are designed to manage HUGE numbers of cards, ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands. If you have less than a hundred or so cards, it's just a really smart flash card system - you could review all the cards every couple days without much trouble. People who really get into SRS tend to use it for everything, because it's an easy way to integrate more knowledge into their existing knowledge-management framework. As such, you should be careful about recommendations for using it for one particular field. The people doing the recommending usually have lower friction regarding adding a couple hundred programming cards to their deck than you will as a beginner.

jeremyjh 14y ago

Sivers has written a full-length article about it before: http://sivers.org/srs http://sivers.org/srs I think he has some good points; you can definitely program a lot faster in a language in which you have memorized much of the standard library and the API/frameworks you are using heavily. I don't really think SRS has a place when it comes to learning a new language. To me it makes more sense once you are certain you are going to specialize in a language/platform. I am still yet to try it.

cotsog 14y ago

Also worth reading wrt to using SRS software to learn to code: http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html

praptak 14y ago

Anki works great for me but it is important to get its scope of usefulness. It's good for standalone facts, not interrelated concepts. This means it doesn't replace books nor practice. On the other hand it's a perfect complement to them. The way I use it is to just create a card or two for every useful trick, library function, command line option or whatever I encounter that looks interesting or useful. The area it worked best so far is git - I no longer fumble for that elusive option to 'log' or 'diff' that I know exists but I just cannot remember it because I use it just rarely enough to forget it between use cases. I do not create large decks upfront so I'm using it as a notepad rather than study book.