[rgoulter]

IME/IMO, Anki is best at aiding recall for domains where there's a long tail of infrequently used items which benefit from quick recall. As in, it's obviously great for language learning; and I've heard it's good for e.g. health science students.

For programming, most things is programming are either going to fall into either side: "you'll use it frequently enough that recalling it is easy", or "you'll use it so infrequently, and it's better to just look it up than to try to remember it".

Where I have had some success in programming related domains was using flashcards to capture parts of some system that were at the edge of my understanding. I wasn't interacting with the system enough to understand it; but, interacted with it frequently enough that I wanted to get some understanding of it.

But, almost always, I think flashcards need to be very clear/short.

In terms of product-ising the idea of "SRS as applied to learning programming", I guess the main question is "how is your product going to be better than just using flashcards with anki"?

[delabroj]

Yeah, I found that in my case I'll boot up in a new language or technology using an Anki deck, then as things start to stick and I am using the new skills in my daily work I'll stop studying the deck.

I've found a few limitations with this approach that I tried to address with SkillPress:

1. When you stop using Anki for any length of time, when you come back you get an avalanche of cards that are due - which can be demoralizing. I solved this by doing away with the 'due cards' UI in favor of the forgetting curve graph. This way you are encouraged to come back weekly to keep your graph green, but you aren't hit in the head with a mountain of cards when you do.

2. When you are first getting started with a technology, you aren't sure what is worth committing to memory, so you'll either add too much or to little detail. With SkillPress the decks are created by someone who is proficient in JavaScript, so the courses are closer to the 80% of the value from 20% of the knowledge sweet spot.

3. In software development you'll often learn a technology and then stop using for a long time because your job or career has moved away from it. With an Anki deck that you haven't studied in months you'll be presented a large pile of cards that you don't know, often showing the more advanced cards first. I solved this by prioritizing cards on both the initial learning and review phases. You can come back to a course any time and SkillPress will try to get you back up to speed starting with the more basic concepts.