[throwawaystress]

Wow, that’s an unnecessarily harsh criticism. The OP spent a lot of time coding this up, it’s still in progress, and they should feel proud of it! Anki isn’t for everybody, and maybe this person made a UI that speaks to some people better than others. I count myself among the camp of people who like SRS but dislike Anki.

[o1y32]

"Anki isn't for everybody"

But I didn't see a single sentence about how this is different from Anki and why? Why do you want to reinvent the wheel when Anki is good enough?

[mbork_pl]

Haven't yet seen this tool, but here's a quick answer. A few years ago, after skimming through the docs, I gave up on Anki because it seemed too complicated. I was using SuperMemo back when it was a DOS (and later Windows 3) application, I consider myself a fairly sophisticated user (e.g. I have a good expertise on LaTeX, even coauthored a textbook, I know Emacs very well, also authored a textbook), I've been a hobby programmer for over 3 decades and a professional one for 7 years, earlier I did a PhD in maths, etc., etc. And still Anki looked intimidating. That says something about "good enough". There's definitely space for an easy to use SRS out there.

I am using Anki now, btw, although I use it in a very simple way, but I think the point still stands. (Also, I agree that any new SRS should be somehow Anki-compatible.)

[_Algernon_]

Rule 1 of Anki, is make good flashcards, and review every day. That's all you need to get started. The defaults are good enough to get started. You don't need fancy image occlusion, add-ons, machine learning tuned custom parameters, etc.

"Make good flashcards" is indeed a difficult problem, but not one that is mitigated by a different tool.

"Review every day" is a question of habit formation, which is difficult, but also not a problem that a different tool will do better.

So the default Anki settings are good enough to get started, and allows itself to be customized as the user gets more familiar and better knows their need.

Without Anki import and export, a new tool simply seems to be a dead end to me, even if it slightly simplifies getting started.

[mbork_pl]

I understand all that (as a long time SuperMemo user). What was intimidating in Anki was the manual. Perhaps if I had tried to use it first there would be no problem...

[krychu]

I can relate to this. I had fond memory of SuperMemo on DOS and wrote a little terminal tool “lrn” inspired by it: https://github.com/krychu/lrn

I acknowledge it’s simple, runs on terminal only and lacks bells and whistles. But this is also probably why I use it so much.

[nerpderp82]

Does it allow you to use Anki decks?

[krychu]

Unfortunately not, “lrn” uses a very simple file format where each entry consists of three lines: question, answer, empty line. But I think it’d be a good idea to look into supporting Anki decks. I should do it some time. It’d be probably limited to decks that use text only.

[nerpderp82]

Yeah, I looked into a little bit. An Anki to Markdown converter would be ideal.

    Question: ...
    Answer: ...

----

[maksimur]

Apart from LaTeX, I'm the opposite of you and while initially I found Anki to be a little "overcrowded", within a few days I became proficient in using its features and understanding its spaced repetition algorithm. I'm genuinely curious about the factors that contribute to the difference in our experiences.

[mbork_pl]

As I said elsewhere – the manual gave the impression of a very complicated tool. (Also, I lack some things I had in SM back in the day, but that's not a big deal.)

[rpodraza]

Ugh, Anki is complicated? I would say it's powerful not complicated. It was really easy to start with existing decks and make my own.

[hwgilbert16]

This is what the project is intended primarily to address. Tools like Anki are very powerful and accomplish what they set out to do, but they fell prey to feature overload in certain aspects.

All it takes is one quick look at their docs to turn people away to a more mainstream option. Condensing its features into a more bite-sized application can make a world of difference for usability.

[pessimizer]

Anki is badly designed and inefficient, largely I think because it was the first project for its author. It's also become venerable and battle-tested, and features have been developed through the needs of a very large userbase.

I don't think that anyone denies that Anki could be a lot better if it were completely rewritten with the experience of having had Anki for years and knowing its pain points. You just have to have a plan, best based in analysis of Anki (and SuperMemo) to do that.

> There's definitely space for an easy to use SRS out there.

I think there's definitely even space for a hard to use SRS that's easier to deal with. But it's got to start by covering at least 80% of what Anki does already or it's not worth switching.

[allarm]

> Anki is badly designed

yes

> and inefficient

no. You can tweak every aspect of srs for each deck as you wish, if it’s inefficient for you - adjust the settings.

[detaro]

"inefficient" in what way? (not really used it myself)

[lelanthran]

> But I didn't see a single sentence about how this is different from Anki and why? Why do you want to reinvent the wheel when Anki is good enough?

Well, sometimes "good enough" isn't really the point. People have different tastes and different motivations.

Why did people use Windows before v3.0 when Mac at the time was objectively better? Why did people bother using OS X when Windows at the time was objectively better? Right now, why are people using Mac OS when UI and UX on Windows is objectively better?

Why use Linux circa 1995 when FreeBSD was objectively better? Why use netBSD now when everything else is objectively better?

[coconut08]

you keep using the word objective and i'm not sure you know what that word means. these are subjective comparisons that you are making. and different people have different subjective tastes.

[lelanthran]

> you keep using the word objective and i'm not sure you know what that word means.

I don't know if maybe English is your first language or not, but objective means "based on established fact".

In other words, you don't know the criteria I've used to rank one above the other in all my comparisons, you only know that it is something based on fact.[1]

> these are subjective comparisons that you are making.

No, they aren't.

The reasons a person may choose one option over another can be subjective. The fact that one performs better than another on a certain criteria is objective.

> and different people have different subjective tastes.

But I already said that:

>> People have different tastes and different motivations.

See?

My entire point was that, even if something is objectively better than something else, people may still want the something else due to reasons of taste and motivation.

[1] And, in fact, you could switch almost all of my comparisons around (except for the poor UI/UX on Macs - that comparison was restricted to only the UI/UX) just by using different criteria in the objective comparisons.

[markeibes]

No. Your assessment is obviously subjective because you say that UI/UX is better on Windows than on macOS which is objectively wrong.

[lelanthran]

> No. Your assessment is obviously subjective because you say that UI/UX is better on Windows than on macOS which is objectively wrong.

UI and UX is not subjective.

That Mac, in 2023, doesn't even have snapping Windows is not an inaccurate observation. No window groups. Barely visible and hard to hit Window titlebar buttons. Fails to remember Window placement for some tools (tkdiff) but not for others.

Without 3rd party addons, Mac window management is unusually poor (compared to various other Window managers, including Windows). Window management is a major component of a UI based on application windows.

None of those things are subjective.

Even with 3rd party add-ons, I eventually gave up and stopped using the MB M1 as soon as I could.

[sunnybeetroot]

Because options is good for consumers and drives healthy competition leading to more innovations.