But the very act of making and organizing your card deck is part of the SRS! It “sucks” because you get no dopamine hit from a fresh desk, as the reward system is not yet in place.
Again, I really think this is a viewpoint we've talked ourselves into to help us feel better about how cumbersome creating the cards are.
I'm willing to grant that there is some value in choosing what to put in the cards, but most of the awkwardness around making cards is UI related. Nobody creates cards on their phone, or while they're walking (AI could do both of these) - people create cards sitting at their computer (like cavemen!) usually clicking through a clunky UI and managing thousands of cards with thousands of clicks. That sucks, and people probably wont realize it sucks until something better comes along.
Anki is great for studying, but the card creation experience sucks. To be specific: I found creating any custom card type immediately dropped me into the bowels of CSS. It felt like writing HTML by hand.
Is there any facility for re-using shared pieces?
I felt like it needed a static site generator type tool to move up a layer of abstraction and reduce the copying of chunks into my card. Is there one? Please mention if so.
I really never thought it would come up in a HN thread but I’m actually working on a modified version of Anki as a personal project (not quite ready yet though, but will open source probably in a few weeks) where improving the editing/curating/creating experience is a big focus. I’m trying to make it markdown-based too.
Just to pick your brain real fast, when creating new cards (from scratch?) what would a better experience look like for you?
I rarely make cards by hand anymore. I would recommend forking something like https://github.com/jasperket/clanki and editing it (perhaps with an agent) so that it works exactly to your liking.
I'm willing to grant that there is some value in choosing what to put in the cards, but most of the awkwardness around making cards is UI related. Nobody creates cards on their phone, or while they're walking (AI could do both of these) - people create cards sitting at their computer (like cavemen!) usually clicking through a clunky UI and managing thousands of cards with thousands of clicks. That sucks, and people probably wont realize it sucks until something better comes along.