[HN Gopher] Show HN: Anki alternative with integrated notes and ...
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Show HN: Anki alternative with integrated notes and import/export
Author : klevertree
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-06-28 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (get21stnight.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (get21stnight.com)
| andrewzah wrote:
| Anki user here, for about 5 years now studying Korean and to a
| lesser extent Japanese and miscellaneous topics.
|
| This is cool, but I will never base my learning on a closed-
| source product. I simply don't trust anyone with data / workflows
| this important to me.
|
| Anki doesn't have great UX, but it is -dependable-. It works, day
| in, day out, and I've had zero issues with it. I trust that in
| 5-10 years, my anki decks will be there and work exactly the
| same.
|
| edit: I'm not trying to be negative. I think there is a lack of
| spaced repetition-based flashcard apps with great UX. However I
| personally value stability and guarantee of longevity over nice
| UX. If the developer of Anki quits tomorrow, it being open source
| ensures that it'll live on with new maintainers (even if that's
| just me).
| joekunin wrote:
| Could you give some insight into how you use Anki for language
| learning? Thanks.
| markusl2ll wrote:
| I'm going to shamelessly plug my own emacs org-mode extension:
| https://github.com/eyeinsky/org-anki
|
| Write all your notes to org-mode files in a git repo, sync these
| (selectively) to Anki. No need to depend on proprietary services.
|
| Ironically though, the easiest way to get your cards to
| AnkiDroid/AnkiMobile is through ankiweb.net (a free service) then
| you could manually export/import cards and stats should that
| disappear. org-anki saves note ID within org-mode, so you can
| keep updating cards after an export/import.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Quick question: What's the benefit of this approach vs using
| org-drill?
| markusl2ll wrote:
| org-drill works entirely in emacs (as does org-fc and
| pamparam) so you'd need to be near a computer when using it
| (unless you run emacs on your phone).
| Siira wrote:
| Presumably Anki's mobile frontends.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Very very nice! Despite I don't feel like I understand the
| context stuff (because not enough useful examples, i.e. not a
| single example card having context?) nor why would I need notes
| (are they essentially no answer flashcards?) this seems the first
| flashcard app I like. Easy to add a card, easy to retire a card,
| nice-looking.
|
| How do I run through the cards one by one (rather than view a
| whole deck)? How do I force it to re-show cards I've already
| solved today?
| dllthomas wrote:
| Periodically I get inspired to create an Anki deck (or several)
| for some stuff at work and share it around; I bounce off it
| because I'm not sure about updates. In particular, I don't
| _think_ there 's a way to mark cards as deserving deletion on re-
| import of a deck? Does anyone know of a way to do that with Anki,
| or of similar software (this?) with such a feature?
| aye01 wrote:
| can anyone tell me why anki is implemented so poorly in its core
| functionality? it works, but its slow, clunky, and error prone.
| that's the drawback for me and reason i am even willing to check
| out competition in this tech.
|
| things like deck syncing, card creation, and the general ui all
| seem like they can be implemented to be much more user centric
| and functional. For me personally and my girlfriend in med school
| have lost data due to anki's strange sync pattern.
|
| I can't be the only software engineer that thinks they can think
| of an implementation in their head that would make anki as a
| product much easier to deal with, right? As far as I can tell,
| people are tied to anki due to Stockholm syndrome and lack of
| worth-it, well maintained alternatives.
| esrh wrote:
| I've rarely encounter bugs in Anki. The ones i have encountered
| have been the result of me hacking on it in some way. Sure it's
| hard to use and pretty clunky, but i wouldn't call it buggy.
| aye01 wrote:
| id beg to differ. i've had plenty of bugs happen myself and
| you can find tons of posts around the web of people
| experiencing similar frustrations. I'm sure there are decks
| that people make that are less error prone when syncing, but
| that is not my experience with the decks i make.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Maybe I've just internalized how to use Anki in a way that
| works well and avoid it's pitfalls, but what are the actual
| problems you have with it?
| aye01 wrote:
| just what i've said in the post. deck syncing is error prone,
| card creation can be tedious and unintuitive for most, and
| general ui is dated among other issues.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| >deck syncing is error prone
|
| I suppose making it manual might not be ideal, but errors
| are very few and far between.
|
| >general ui is dated
|
| I don't really know what this means. Why change something
| that works just because it's stayed the same for a while?
| blakesley wrote:
| surprised to hear you think the GUI is fine. I've been
| using it for a year, and I know my way around the app &
| menus by now, but I still struggle on occasion, as things
| are just not intuitively laid out and/or not well-
| presented.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| I'm building an open source Anki clone, and lemme tell you
| shit's surprisingly hard. Getting syncing working without
| resorting to uploading entire SQLite databases is nontrivial.
| You're basically doing multi-master database replication... but
| you gotta build it yourself (there's no easy way to sync sqlite
| with some serverside database (ignoring
| firebase/couchdb/pouchdb for various technical reasons)):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-master_replication
|
| The lack of "worth-it" alternatives is due to the fact that
| there's no money in this market. Students are very unwilling to
| buy software, and if you use ads you end up like Quizlet. YC
| funded a startup in this area (Hickory) and they're... not
| doing well.
|
| The main reason why everyone still uses Anki despite its issues
| is because it is still hands-down the best solution out there,
| despite all the bugs and clunkiness. There are a million and
| one spaced repetition systems out there, but Anki's plugin
| system and shared decks make for a very strong network effect.
|
| If you're a med student, I don't recommend moving off Anki. The
| ecosystem there is too strong. If you're losing data, post in
| the /r/anki subreddit - Anki automatically generates backups
| and they'll walk you through restoring them.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I've barely used Anki, but I feel like it shouldn't be more
| than an open spec/format that allows people to make their own
| compatible clients and services.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| It's open source so you can just copy the spec. The
| community's built a syncing server here:
| https://github.com/ankicommunity/anki-sync-server
|
| There's also a really interesting templating library that
| generates cards for Anki: https://closetengine.com/
| fire wrote:
| Naive q: would solutions like GUNdb[1] relieve the
| synchronization issue or are there special considerations
| with flash cards that favor some other strategy?
|
| 1: https://github.com/amark/gun
| aye01 wrote:
| I'm sure its non trivial, especially if youre building the
| clone by yourself, but over the time anki has been around,
| you'd think they wouldve ironed out the kinks. losing data
| itself isn't the problem. i can get the decks back myself.
| its the fact the app errors so much that its almost common
| knowledge to hit up r/anki and get a manual procedure to
| crawl through backups manually.
|
| i think their mistake is thinking memorization tools are only
| focused on students and not learners in general. I use anki
| for memorizing chess positions, learning languages, etc. I'm
| also a full time worker and have plenty of money to spend on
| a tools that will help my productivity/hobbies. id be more
| than happy to fork over cash for the anki system with better
| client apps. if they had a concern that the cost would put
| them out of reach of students (their iphone app is $20 so i
| doubt its a concern), then they should just implement student
| tier memberships for free while people who can pay will pay.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| >its the fact the app errors so much that its almost common
| knowledge to hit up r/anki and get a manual procedure to
| crawl through backups manually.
|
| I'm curious what causes this, because I definitely have a
| different experience from you. Very few errors at all, and
| I have decks with thousands of cards and hundreds of
| megabytes of metadata (audio clips, images, etc)
| diegocg wrote:
| Is there any reason why these apps have to keep the database
| state locally? Why not just create a web service? The problem
| with this model would be keeping the server infrastructure
| running and getting some money to pay the bills, but it looks
| much simpler.
|
| I also hate that the anki shared decks web site does not
| encourage collaboration, or at least not the decks I see in
| their web site. There are a lot of shitty, outdated decks and
| instead of collaborating to fix them people just upload their
| own shitty deck. Perhaps the people studying medicine who
| create decks on their own don't have this problem, but it is
| something I see in the web site. It would be great to have a
| site integrated with git so people can collaborate on github.
|
| Also, classification of decks by language is something I
| miss. When you search for a language, eg. Russian, you get
| decks for English->Russian, but also for Russian->English.
| It's hard to find the deck I want
|
| (Just some suggestions, in case someone of working on anki
| clones)
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| > I also hate that the anki shared decks web site does not
| encourage collaboration...
|
| Dude, I'm building _exactly_ this. I 'm not basing it on
| git for various reasons, but I _am_ using event sourcing,
| and git is basically event sourcing for code. My system
| will (eventually) allow pull requests, comments, upvotes
| /downvotes, and all kinds of community shenanigans on flash
| cards. It's months away from release... but here's the repo
| if you wanna have a look:
| https://github.com/dharmaturtle/cardoverflow
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| > Is there any reason why these apps have to keep the
| database state locally? Why not just create a web service?
| The problem with this model would be keeping the server
| infrastructure running and getting some money to pay the
| bills, but it looks much simpler.
|
| The idea of not having my personal decks stored on my own
| disk(s) is honestly much worse than the annoyance of
| sometimes (rarely) running into issues syncing. I've been
| working on various decks for literally years and have
| several thousands of cards made. Server-side stored only?
| Please no.
| harperlee wrote:
| Are you asking why does an app that is locally installed
| need to work without internet connection?
|
| If so, consider commuting via subway.
| wst_ wrote:
| I do get your point but... are you saying you have no
| reception in subway?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| In many cases, yes. But additionally, even with mostly
| reliable reception people don't want to have to _depend_
| on that reception. It 's poor form and poor design to
| include an intermittent service (even if largely reliable
| for a large portion of your users) as a mandatory
| component when it is technically unnecessary.
|
| Offline first is simply a more reliable way to build
| systems than online-only. Specifics long forgotten, but a
| few years ago (perhaps 10+ now) a lot of people got,
| understandably, upset when they found out their single
| player games couldn't be played without an internet
| connection in order to authenticate. Oops, auth server
| went down, players can't play the thing they dropped $50+
| on.
| allenu wrote:
| I've built my own flashcard app and I ended up just syncing a
| journal of all your actions on a device (creating/edit
| cardings, evaluating them) and having all your other devices
| play those back to get to the "shared state". I store data
| using SQLite as well. It works pretty well for me.
|
| You're definitely right about students being unwilling to buy
| software. They're already cash-strapped, so they're very
| unlikely to pay for an app, let alone a monthly subscription.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| Hah - you're describing "event sourcing" and it's the
| technique I'm using:
| https://flpvsk.com/blog/2019-07-20-offline-first-apps-
| event-...
|
| Unfortunately event sourcing means distributed systems...
| and I'm learning this on the fly on nights & weekends.
| Martin Kleppmann's "Designing Data Intensive Applications"
| has put the fear of god in me.
| allenu wrote:
| Yup, I'm doing event sourcing.
|
| For my approach, I really just have each device append to
| its own journal file. I use iCloud's file storage, so I
| don't even have a service that I run. Each peer device
| just uploads the latest version of its journal to a
| shared folder and downloads its peers' journals and plays
| back the delta as needed.
|
| I intentionally chose this architecture since I didn't
| want to run my own sync service. It keeps the sync system
| free, but iCloud can be slow. Unfortunately for me, if
| iCloud is slow, the app gets blamed for it.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| Nice. Just checking, did you not go with
| firebase/couchdb/pouchdb due to pricing?
| allenu wrote:
| Yes. Anything that required me to pay would mean I'd have
| to charge a subscription from users, which I didn't want
| to do.
| allenu wrote:
| I think the reason it is where it is is because it was created
| a long time ago when some of the things we expect today weren't
| the norm (cloud sync, friendly UX). I think it has such a large
| user base that it would be very difficult to revamp it without
| disturbing a lot of users (and add-ons). I think people who use
| Anki are happy with it as-is, so there's momentum there. And
| new users who don't like it, well, they don't stick around.
|
| I've written my own spaced repetition flashcard app (see my
| profile), so I've looked a little bit at how the data is stored
| in Anki and have a general idea of how sync works, and my
| impression is sync was bolted onto an existing system meant for
| a single device. I've seen posts from users in the sub-reddit
| about how if you do lessons on one device and then do lessons
| on another, there'll be a conflict in the data and you'll have
| to manually tell Anki to pick one over the other. (This may
| have been fixed since, of course.)
| aye01 wrote:
| i know this motivation all too well in my line of work, but i
| hate it. its the code conservative approach that will just
| let things cobweb since people don't hate it enough for anki
| to change it app dev. granted, anki isn't some corp that has
| money to throw at this product, but theres such a high demand
| for this app to be better and it just isn't and people are
| just okay with it because its the best they have.
| fny wrote:
| It's maintained by a sole developer who competes against goons
| who rode off the back of his brand name:
|
| https://www.ankiapp.com
| Hamuko wrote:
| To be fair, _" anki"_ (An Ji ) simply means "memorization" in
| Japanese so it's hardly super original by itself.
| knubie wrote:
| I had the same thought and created my own implementation [0].
| As another user said it's surprisingly difficult, and Anki is
| incredibly extensible, so it can be difficult to fill
| everyone's need.
|
| What I've noticed is that a lot of the power users and
| influencers are very much invested in Anki, which makes it
| difficult to get them to check out your alternative. And
| because these are the type of users that are promoting Anki, it
| has gained a lot of mindshare in this space.
|
| That said, the people that have found my app are very grateful
| it exists as an alternative to Anki.
|
| As far as the syncing, as another user said, it is actually
| quite difficult. There just are not a lot of options out there
| for this kind of use case. Anki's syncing is custom-built.
|
| [0] https://mochi.cards/
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Watching my med student girlfriend use Anki the past few years
| has been horrible. The syncing in particular is bad, as you
| pointed out - and bad in a "irreversible data loss" kind of
| way.
|
| I've thought about trying to create something better, but Anki
| itself is so entrenched in some communities that there's a
| strong network effect - both through shared decks and add-ons.
| (Also, I don't personally have an application for rote
| memorization, so someone who does would probably create
| something better.)
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I use SyncThing [0] to sync my anki databases between a
| laptop, desktop and a raspberry pi. Fingers crossed nothing
| has gone wrong yet, apart from problems such as using
| incompatible versions on the same db.
|
| [0] https://syncthing.net
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestion - as a med student, she has an
| iPad that can access certain medical resources, and is
| already an iPhone user, so I don't know if SyncThing is
| really an option for her.
|
| I'm not sure that most users can be expected to figure out
| things like "does this update include a database upgrade?"
| "which devices are running an old database?" and "what do I
| do when the software told me the database on disk is
| corrupt?"
|
| And I think SyncThing would still suffer from the issue of
| needing to make sure only one device writes to the Anki
| sync at a time. I really think some sort of cloud service
| that handles multi-headed sync of cards/notes (and makes it
| hard to take permanently destructive actions) would be a
| real competitor in this space - if they can overcome the
| Anki network effect.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| What issues has she had? I sync between mobile - macbook -pc
| desktop every day and rarely have any issues, and all of them
| have been salvageable. This is over maybe 5-6 years of usage
| at this point.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| IIRC, it's basically just that if she leaves Anki up on her
| Macbook without explicitly syncing & exiting, and then
| tries to use her iPhone or iPad, she will lose state on one
| of the devices.
|
| It's a lot of cognitive overhead to remember not to touch
| Anki on any other devices unless you've synced and closed
| it out on the most recently used one.
|
| Since she has a ton of cards, syncing takes a while. And
| occasionally it just throws a random error.
|
| Moreover, there's a sense of fear every time she uses Anki
| that she will hit the wrong button and lose her expected
| state.
| blakesley wrote:
| I totally agree with this, especially the last bit about
| just the mentality it creates. I wish Anki had an
| (optional) auto-sync feature, but maybe there are too
| many edge cases for that kind of feature.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| I suppose remembering to sync is an issue, but I've just
| built the habit of always syncing when finished. Anki
| will also sync automatically when you exit (this might be
| an option you have to enable in the settings).
| aye01 wrote:
| your comment itself points the huge issue out. the way i
| see it, as evident in your comment, anki has given you
| several issue over just the 5-6 years youve used it that
| requires your to manually salvage your system... what other
| apps do you do that for?
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Very minor issues. Once every couple months I'll have
| forgotten to sync from device A after adding cards, do
| some reps on device B, realize I'm missing cards, and
| have to go back and resync.
|
| Only a couple times over my entire usage have I actually
| had to do a full resync, and it's pretty painless. I just
| reupload to ankiweb, or download from it, and it's done.
| This is usually because I've caused some incompatibility
| via add-ons, or anki versions. But it's always been easy
| to fix.
|
| >what other apps do you do that for?
|
| I'm not sure what other apps I've used nearly as much as
| anki. Probably just firefox/chrome and emacs. I've had
| issues with losing tabs in browsers far more often than
| losing info with anki. And losing data by not saving in
| an editor is pretty easily done as well. I'm actually
| surprised at how well anki will handle changes from
| multiple sources. Unless you modify the same card on
| different devices, it pretty much always seems to work as
| expected.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| 100% - Anki "does the job" but it has a lot of sharp
| edges. It's software that users are afraid to use.
| klevertree wrote:
| Anki has a lot of features and it's been around forever. It's
| tough to keep something like that smooth and sleek. But yeah,
| my original impetus for creating this was loving the idea of
| Anki, but having a really hard time sticking with it because of
| how clunky it is.
| aye01 wrote:
| i agree. i say all these gripes knowing anki isn't some huge
| corp that can throw money at this problem, but it really is
| time for a revamp or more competition in the space that is
| worth moving to.
| asp_net wrote:
| > it works, but its slow, clunky, and error prone.
|
| Interesting assessment. I use it almost daily, and I have no
| issue with it whatsoever (macOS <-> iOS <-> iPadOS). Sync works
| absolutely flawless. UI is not modern and it's a bit slow with
| Rosetta, but stable and fast enough to add and edit cards. Copy
| and paste of images works ... stats are okay. And, the most
| important part, the algorithm just works well for me.
|
| tl;dr: I love it.
| aye01 wrote:
| i have no complaints on the memorization system itself. it
| works and thats why i will continue to use anki despite my
| gripes with it. i do not agree that syncing is flawless
| though since i've had many major issues in the past. i
| imagine there are plenty that do not have issues depending on
| what they're studying and the contents of the decks they
| make, but that is not what i've experienced.
| Swaglord333 wrote:
| Anki is free though..
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm not sure why I'd use this when there are tons of free and
| feature-rich alternatives to pick from. I _might_ consider it if
| I could buy a perpetual license, but I 'm not about to drop
| $5/month on a... studying app.
| josho wrote:
| I find these types of comments interesting. It shows just how
| much VC money has distorted the value of software.
|
| Google/Facebook/etc all provide amazing software to us for
| free. Because they had hundreds of millions raised from
| investors to give away value while the businesses figured out
| how to build a business.
|
| Yes I agree that the unique value prop for this is a little
| muddy compared to other apps. But at the heart, if a student's
| gpa is going to improve from use of this then yeh that's
| clearly worth $5/mth, and should be a no brainer to purchase.
| notdang wrote:
| I don't think the VC money distorted anything. People are not
| opposed to paying for what they are using. People are opposed
| to paying monthly.
| sabco wrote:
| So basically the same features as Anki except it's paid?
| klevertree wrote:
| Nope! A lot of features Anki doesn't have. Try out the demo
| account and let me know what you think.
| zaik wrote:
| What kind of features? Is there a comparision page?
| danicgross wrote:
| Anki is paid too. ($25 for the mobile app.)
| magnio wrote:
| Only on iOS. Anki is free on Android.
| Blahah wrote:
| free and open source on desktop, web and Android
| KerrickStaley wrote:
| This is not correct. The web version of Anki is free to
| use but is closed-source.
| Blahah wrote:
| true! sorry for my lazy wording
| shadilay wrote:
| I use AnkiDroid from Fdroid.
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.ichi2.anki/
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| Is this OSS?
|
| If not, then there are a dozen (also non-OSS) alternatives one
| could choose from.
| klevertree wrote:
| It's not OSS, no. OSS is a tough business model for small SAAS.
|
| And there are alternatives, but none of them work quite as well
| for the intended use case. It's possible to hack Anki for most
| of the functionality of 21st Night, but that gets tedious,
| especially for people who just want something that works out of
| the box.
| IAmMaulik wrote:
| Please name one
| itake wrote:
| https://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf
| https://github.com/Yvee1/hascard
| https://github.com/amy6/delern
|
| and anki
| [deleted]
| Anon1096 wrote:
| I'm not sure that there's a dozen, but one very well-known
| one is the third word of the post title. :)
| hda111 wrote:
| Tiddlywiki is Open Source and has an Anki plugin
| (TiddlyRemember)
| Kelamir wrote:
| https://mnemosyne-proj.org/ - The Mnemosyne Project
| hamburga wrote:
| org-mode with org-fc for spaced repetition
| prirai wrote:
| I use ForgetMeNot and its super helpful and even better than Anki
| in some ways. So, made a switch. Best is that its open source.
| benrbray wrote:
| This app looks pretty good. There's also RemNote [1] which serves
| a similar function. It's kind of like Roam + Anki all in one.
|
| I'm really loving the proliferation of good new ideas for note-
| taking and memorization. I wish I had some of these tools when I
| was in school. Even if some of them are paid right now, it's only
| a matter of time before solid free and open-source competition
| emerges. I'd love to see some Anki-like tools for Athens [2].
|
| [1] https://www.remnote.io/pricing/feature_chart [2]
| https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
| Blahah wrote:
| It's pretty straight forward to integrate anki with almost any
| tool. For example I use it with tiddlywiki (see
| https://kebifurai.github.io/TiddlyResearch/ for an example
| setup).
| hda111 wrote:
| How does it relate to TiddlyRemember?
| sobjornstad wrote:
| Author of TiddlyRemember here.
|
| TiddlyRemember is a plugin for TiddlyWiki with an
| associated plugin for Anki. TiddlyResearch is a version of
| TiddlyWiki that comes bundled with the TiddlyRemember
| TiddlyWiki plugin.
| knubie wrote:
| Mochi [0] is another. It is markdown driven with bi-directional
| links between cards. Templates. Local-first + syncing, and a
| bunch more. (Also, I made it.)
|
| [0] https://mochi.cards/
| klevertree wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah, Remnote is also really cool and a great product.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| What I really want is templating.
|
| Like, the word An Ji consists of two characters. I'd love to get
| my notes on each of those characters readily available and
| updateable when I review that word.
| knubie wrote:
| You can do this in Mochi (https://mochi.cards/).
| klevertree wrote:
| Huh, not entirely sure what you mean. When you say readily
| available and updateable, what are you hoping to accomplish?
| Diti wrote:
| Having access to the notes you had written for each of the
| characters (provided the deck owner wrote that word card by
| including the cards of each character).
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| FYI the screenshot of the app has the formula:
|
| Revenue = Profit - Loss
|
| It should be:
|
| Revenue = Profit + Loss (as Profit = Revenue - Loss).
|
| Otherwise, cool!
| esrauch wrote:
| I think the nonprogrammer view would be that "loss" is a
| positive number, then the original format is correct
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| Ah, could be.
| jawarner wrote:
| Revenue is bigger than profit, so it's worse than that. I
| think it's just plain wrong, or it assumes loss is a negative
| number.
| klevertree wrote:
| Oh man, you are correct. Shoot. I don't know how I did that.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| "21st Night attaches your notes and flashcards to the source you
| originally got them from"
|
| This seems to be the main thing that might differentiate this
| program from Anki (other than the specially made decks for
| particular subjects, which could also be a big thing). This seems
| to be done, based on the demo deck, with tagging? This being an
| important differentiating factor, if possible it might be good if
| the example decks had more detailed contextual links rather than
| having just "from textbook" (without indicating which textbook)
| or "from life".
|
| If there was a more clean explanation of the differences between
| your software and other similar products it might be helpful.
| nafizh wrote:
| Doesn't remnote have this functionality? Their main focus seems
| to be creating flashcards from your notes.
| klevertree wrote:
| Not, not just tagging.
|
| Try creating a note, then highlighting a phrase from that note.
| You'll see that you have the ability to create a card from that
| phrase, which will then be attached to that note. The next time
| you pull up that note, you'll be able to see the card and vice-
| versa.
|
| You can also see attached cards and notes side-by-side if you
| prefer working that way.
| siva7 wrote:
| That's already possible with Anki, even without Addons. Just
| add a new field source to your card deck
| dotancohen wrote:
| All my Anki note types have a field `HiddenNotes` which is
| never displayed on any cards. In addition to adding
| information when the card is created, I can also go back and
| add something to the field while reviewing in Ankidroid.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| Does this app provide offline storage or cloud storage? I don't
| want to guess but it was not very evident on your product page.
|
| The thing I really like about Anki is I can create a separate
| profile to store cards related to say private confidential
| knowledge at workplace and I won't sync that profile so those
| cards stay just there encrypted on my office laptop. Hence
| offline storage is critical.
| klevertree wrote:
| Cloud storage. I didn't expect people to use this for
| confidential knowledge, to be honest.
| spidersouris wrote:
| You should also check out IDoRecall[1]. It's a great alternative
| and has the possibility to create recalls out of notes, too.
|
| [1] https://www.idorecall.com/
|
| (NB: I am not the creator, nor am I being paid to promote it.
| Just a regular user who found it particularly useful for my
| studies and personal knowledge.)
| swiley wrote:
| No repo link? Anki has theirs on the front page.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It looks like proprietary software. To claim to be an
| alternative for Anki it would have to be free software at
| least.
| klevertree wrote:
| Well, it's an alternative for people who are looking for
| interesting, useful flashcard apps and found Anki limited or
| hard to use. Would you say Windows isn't an alternative for
| Linux?
| jhgb wrote:
| Anki already is an alternative to SuperMemo, so a
| proprietary alternative to Anki doesn't make sense unless
| it somehow improves over SuperMemo.
| la_fayette wrote:
| No, it should at least mention "a paid alternative". E.g.
| one would say LibreOficce is a FREE alternative to MS.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Am I smarter or stupider for not memorizing notes like I did as a
| student? I still take notes, and sometimes refer to them. (I also
| take a fair amount that never get read.) And I still learn
| things. But the learning I do is either because I read something
| once and it's already internalized ("Myanmar's anti-military
| activists have started using bombs,"), or because I've done
| something a lot and it's become ingrained ("docker exec -it phan
| bash").
|
| There just aren't big lists of things I need to memorize, like
| there once were. Also, I'm certain I'm learning slower than I did
| as a student. But that could again be good or bad -- maybe I
| stopped learning as fast because I picked all the low-hanging
| fruit and I'm busy using it.
|
| I certainly don't _see_ lots of low-hanging fruit like I used to.
| But I always wonder if that 's a failure of imagination.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I certainly take notes, specifically so that I don't need to
| remember things in detail. I know I can checkout my repository
| and have everything to hand in one-place.
|
| But that said for learning a language these kind of tools are
| very useful.
| rwetv wrote:
| Memorization is crucial for a subject like math. In a highly
| technical branch of math like, say, topology, definitions fly
| at one like bvllets from a m@chine gun. Just to solve a problem
| you might need immediate access in your head to some 12
| definitions, 5 lemmas, 3 theorems, 4 corollaries and 6
| prototype/canonical examples meaning you want to keep them
| all(along with their proofs as proofs carry important
| techniques and ideas) at the tip of your tongue and top of your
| head. Just because you "understood" them once in the past
| doesn't mean much if you cannot recall them immediately right
| where you need them. Obviously, you can look them up one by one
| (granted you know what you're looking for). Along the way,
| you'd have to re-understand them cause understanding is often
| fleeting in math, but this will make you lose time, momentum
| and get/keep you stuck in a thick quagmire making the original
| problem massively more difficult than it is.
|
| Many very important results in math (that have become staples)
| are made up of extremely specific techniques that are very hard
| to reproduce even after 5 minutes one has read (and presumably
| understood) them. Even understanding in math comes in waves. To
| get a deeper understanding of an idea you'd need to have some
| preliminary grasp on it.
|
| I often see the sentiment "in math if you understand something,
| you don't need to memorize it" on English speaking side of
| Internet. Contrast that with the old Soviet school (& modern
| Indian one?) philosophy which was "understand -> drill ->
| memorize". IMO, the former philosophy produces weaker, barely
| able mathematicians.
|
| This vid below about Hitler learning topology echoes some of
| what's typed above.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyD4p8_y8Kw
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| How universal is this experience?
|
| I remember a math grad student friend who said "math is a
| young man's game". He compared it to cycling; nothing you do
| in your old age would compare to what you could do earlier.
|
| In fact according to him math is worse than cycling, if I'm
| correct that cyclists peak in their early 40s. Contrast that
| to economics, which specifically offers the Clark Medal for
| the best work performed by someone under forty, because old-
| timers would otherwise snaffle up every prize.
| rwetv wrote:
| I am not sure I understand the connection you're making
| between the cumulative and highly technical nature of math
| and the age of a mathlete.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| That's fair. I didn't relate that my friend went on to
| say that the reason math is a young man's game is that
| it's only the young who can read and memorize results
| fast enough, and keep enough of that information in their
| head at one time, to do important work at the frontiers
| of math. The brain has physical limits, just as the rest
| of the body does.
|
| I am revolted by that idea. And I'm certainly a better
| coder than I was in my thirties, and I was better then
| than I was in my twenties. (Not that I'm under the
| illusion that my work compares to PhD-level math.)
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| People repeat that quote a lot, but I don't think there's
| much evidence for it. The main thing is people have kids,
| and kids take time. Boom 10 years gone from high-
| performance productive individual-contributor work. It was
| uncommon for people to go back to school at a later age,
| but maybe not anymore?
| Groxx wrote:
| since I'm largely in the same boat: I think it has more
| relevance in some fields than in others. E.g. programming is
| _relatively_ good at naming things descriptively, but less-so
| many fields that name tons of things based on the discoverer,
| e.g. biology-related things have a fair bit of this. And
| obviously there are numerous exceptions in both directions.
|
| For programming: I'm quite happy saying "learn concepts, not
| terms/frameworks". There's obviously some value in things you
| use a ton daily, but you'll naturally remember those through
| use - for the rest, thankfully, programmers are great at making
| things searchable, and there are loads of tools to search even
| when not (e.g. grep). Terms can be useful for communication
| purposes, learn them as needed and meh beyond that. Frameworks
| though are basically the programming-world equivalent of
| fashion, they change with the weather / at the whims of popular
| tweets. Yolo - learn how it works instead of the API, that's
| waaaay more useful, and is probably transferrable to dozens of
| other frameworks.
|
| But as an example: I routinely forget the argument order and
| finer details of the various "split a string" funcs in the 3 or
| 4 languages I use ~weekly. Because I only use them every few
| months. And in my next language, quickly-recall-able memory of
| those other-lang patterns won't help me in the least (if
| anything, they might slow me down). _Splitting a string_
| though, and choosing which end to start from, and how many
| times to split, and the various i18n complications, is a
| general concept that 's applicable in all languages.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| I use Anki for infrequent power-user commands and e.g. Python
| modules I don't use often. There's a class of tasks that I do
| regularly, but infrequently enough that I have to hit Stack
| Overflow every time unless I've put it in Anki.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| It's a blessing I hadn't noticed, that my work does not
| require the perpetual memorization required by, say,
| pharmacology.
|
| It's funny that society doesn't normally classify programmers
| as creatives. (Then again, it doesn't classify scientists
| that way either.)
| inamiyar wrote:
| Some things just need more memorization than others. I used a
| ton of flashcards for Latin vocab and learning the farsi
| alphabet but almost none for my CS classes (used notes for
| those).
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