Maybe Anki is indeed useful for memorizing flags, faces, words in a new language, syntax of programming languages and names of chemical compounds... maybe.
The things I'm trying to learn like past economic decisions and investments and their impacts, logical fallacies, algorithms and data structures for my next coding round, database design patterns, areas where one system design pattern excels and sucks at with examples, all study areas where finding the core patterns and their applications is central to the learning process, to make any bit of real progress. Anki sucks so bad at this. m
my disgust at atomic spaced repetition, of which Anki is the cheerleader, comes from how gullible I was reading salesy pitches of "remember anything", "remember forever", "how i could memorize x in y days" kind of articles floating around suggesting it. It left a bad taste, like those As-seen-on-tv home exercise equipments and non stick pans with grifty promises.
Anki maybe useful, to some, but it falls apart for everyone as soon as you add any meaningful complexity beyond mapping 2 lists word to word.
So why do it? Why not learn things the wholesome way? With pen and paper ?
I think Anki zealots that pitch the software as the solution to everything can be both tiring and misleading. But I also think that memorization, using whatever system, is going to be a part of any kind of learning. As you mention, in some cases larger (medicine, foreign language vocab), in other cases smaller.
If we accept that all learning involves some memorization, I believe there's no harm in using the best tool for that specific job. I've seen a good amount of literature showing that SRS-like systems are indeed the best.
The things I'm trying to learn like past economic decisions and investments and their impacts, logical fallacies, algorithms and data structures for my next coding round, database design patterns, areas where one system design pattern excels and sucks at with examples, all study areas where finding the core patterns and their applications is central to the learning process, to make any bit of real progress. Anki sucks so bad at this. m
my disgust at atomic spaced repetition, of which Anki is the cheerleader, comes from how gullible I was reading salesy pitches of "remember anything", "remember forever", "how i could memorize x in y days" kind of articles floating around suggesting it. It left a bad taste, like those As-seen-on-tv home exercise equipments and non stick pans with grifty promises.
Anki maybe useful, to some, but it falls apart for everyone as soon as you add any meaningful complexity beyond mapping 2 lists word to word.
So why do it? Why not learn things the wholesome way? With pen and paper ?