http://foolsworkshop.com/reviews/anki-all-the-way

BTW. Anki really rocks and I think you’re really missing the point about what Anki is supposed to do.

I’ve been using flash card programs for year for learning….

first JFC for japanese, then stackz….

been hearing about ANKI for yonks and finally tried it about a year ago…

it has been a revelation…

now I use it to study everything

physics, electronics, java/python/c++ programming, operating systems etc as well as languages

the cram function btw is useful for studying just before exams….

sometimes you get anxious that you haven’t learnt everything properly and the cram function puts you at rest by letting you quickly go through all your notes.

My concern is, however, that with all the criticisms that Damien receives from people who (perhaps) do not understand as well as he does how memory retention works, is that he will be tempted to lose his focus. That he will attempt to have Anki address these criticisms, and in the process make it a less effective memory learning tool.

“Study on demand,” sounds like a good idea, but my own experience in trying to memorize things by incessantly repeating them, is that it is frustratingly ineffective. I remember repeating a new word I was trying to learn for an entire hour — only to have completely forgotten it anyway by the next day. (I tried this with several different words, with the same result.) Very ineffective use of time, I discovered. Of course, “Study on demand” is not nearly that extreme, but it seems to be a step in that direction, and, to my perspective, would not fit into Anki’s approach. (Just my two cents.)

Thanks so much for all the hard work you have put into Anki, Damien!

John

I made a link to this article on my own review of Anki that you can find on my blog here. It is in french site so you might not understand it all. But it has pagerank 4 so I guess it will help to raise your audience.

I will check out the rest of your articles when I’ll have some time.

Cheers!

It is true there are some serious design and usability issues with Anki. As you say the functionality itself is great.

On the other hand, as you note, he has worked a lot on it and he is very responsive to user input. I urge you to email the developer and make clear some of your frustrations so that he knows there are potential users out there who also feel the way I feel. It is a shame because this is truly the most powerful app out there (for Mac at least).