[kalonis]

I use anki for around seven years now and it has proven to be the best learning technique for me so far.

When I went to university I still believed that understanding is everything and learning will happen en passant. I read many books, pondered long about them, and forgot everything a month later.

Five years ago I started studying again (computer science) and as anki has already been usefull in learning programming for me I used it extensively during my studies. Instead of taken notes on paper I just marked important facts while reading and made anki cards for them afterward. Sometimes these where simple atomic facts like "What is the definition of XYZ?", sometimes they demanded a longer answer "How does x yield y?". It took me about 20 to 30 minutes each day to reherse my cards (while commuting to work) and learning has never been that easy.

I soon realized that understanding a fact or each step of a proof the first time you read it is not as important as often stated. Understanding often only came with learning because anki forced me to think about these facts daily. That was much more effective than pondering hard about them once.

I made a deck for each course the day it started and archived it after the exam. But not only did this help me during the exam I also forgot far less of what I have learned afterwards. Overall I would say that learning with flashcards took only about a fifth of the time it would have taken with other learning techniques that have a stronger focus on understanding (mind-maps, active reading &c.)

[notheguyouthink]

What are the biggest features for your use of Anki, if you don't mind me asking?

I'm writing my own self hosted backend for this type of thing, and I'm curious what features might be of most help for me to memorize data. Though, it's quite possibly that I'd just make a bridge to Anki, who knows.

[kalonis]

As I used Anki to learn a lot of math and computer science related topics one of the most valuable features has been its integration of latex and the possibility to type formulars.

The thing I missed the most about anki was any possibility to edit and manage my cards in plaintext files. I would have really liked to type my cards with a real texteditor like Vim instead of the integrated gtk text input field.

[tbabej]

> The thing I missed the most about anki was any possibility to edit and manage my cards in plaintext files.

Well, that's exactly what I implemented with the vim plugin referenced in comment below!