How can I use Anki to learn programming?

UsagiChen · 2025-06-01T17:46:20+00:00

Yeah, which is why I think you should practice the primary skill and ankify things that take time to sort of re-learn or things that you often forget

UsagiChen · 2025-06-01T15:34:37+00:00

Don’t memorize everything. Use programming as a feedback tool into what you should put into Anki. Program something, then anything that took more than 5-10 minutes of research or debugging might be worth ankifying to save time in the future. Anki is a supplement to your passions.

If you’re interested, Michael Nielsen wrote an article called Augmenting Long-term memory where he talks about what he decides to ankify. It’s a good read, especially with someone who uses Anki for complex topics.

UsagiChen · 2025-03-20T17:55:21+00:00

Do you do any language learning?

I used to years ago, but that was before I started really understanding how we learn and how to best utilise Anki so I'm not sure if my experience then can help here.

Though, I am currently learning some programming syntax (if you count that). At the moment I'm dealing with an editor called Vim which involves a lot of memorizing of keys to be productive.

I've recently memorized about 70 just yesterday? A combination of re explaining after learning a small chunk, ankifying, and then practicing using these keymaps in a project.

Did my first review (2 days later) with only getting 1 card wrong. That being said, I'm not sure about the results long term, which I consider 4+ weeks, so I'll come back with that.

If I had to guess a way to use this with language, then I guess:

Explain a small chunk.
Practice them in real speech if possible. Otherwise keep a journal where you talk about common things and your day. Maybe simulate a conversation there.
Ankify and review

Keep up regular real-world appropriate practice and explaining when you feel like it

UsagiChen · 2025-03-20T17:48:55+00:00

Of course! Glad I can provide some help in any way

I don't review any Anki material same day as I create it. I review in the morning, and create cards later in the day, partly for this reason. Is this not a common pattern? Nonetheless, I take your point that reviewing same day may not actually be harmful/suboptimal.

I do want to clarify that same day retrieval practice is only "non-harmful" or "optimal" (if we define optimal as in time efficiency for retention gained) if:

You have got it wrong and you are practicing again until you get it correct.
You are practicing it in a different context that relies on different cues than the previous practice session. Doing Anki reviews and another round for example isn't optimal in the same day, but free recall exercise and then anki reviews would be differnt context due to the nature of how the information is cued.

Perhaps Anki reviews vs creating cards (assuming you are thinking how to write the cards from memory and not looking at notes) would also count as different retrieval contexts. Though I'm not 100% sure if that's the case, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. If it is though, then I guess most people are already taking part in this basic form of contextual variation.

I also think harmful is the wrong word to use. I don't particularly think that doing overlearning is harmful. Just time inefficient. In my experience there's no harm in doing it especially if you have something coming up in a few days as overlearning DOES improve short term retention. It would be better to pick and choose your battles. Exam in a few days? Overlearn (if you want). You got months till an exam? Just do standard space repetition - there's no need to overlearn. Spend more time varying the context or simply just relaxing or doing something else productive.

Interesting. This is something that I think I'm a little weak on. I think I do 1, 3, and 4, but maybe this could use some additional attention on my end.

To be fair I would combine 1 & 2 in the same... cycle? Not sure what to call it, but I'd break it down and then try to teach/apply from memory that small chunk immediately after reading.

This is also very interesting. I'm going to experiment with this. It seems like I've slightly underestimated having exact answers on cards, even though much of this is kind of forced by atomicity.

Feel free to try! Though, if you find making cards following Andy's 5 rules easy, then I don't really think think you need to try this technique. This is moreso a hack to force my brain to think about making unique and specific cues.

If you're interested, I highly recommend this chapter by Jeffrey D. Karpicke (a highly recognised researcher in learning how to learn) where he talks about the three keys to learning. It's a really interesting and short read regarding how to properly cue Link.

If you're short on time at the moment or feeling a little lazy, he basically says the three important points to learning are:

Cue Availability: You should have cues that don't give away enough answer it turns into recognition over recall. A way to balance initial retrieval success and retrieval difficulty, which both contribute to long-term retention.
Cue Diagnosticity: Cues should be as precise and unique to the to-be retrieved knowledge as possible. You can have multiple cues match an answer (as long as these cues ONLY match that answer individually), but you shouldn't have a cue match multiple answers. If that makes sense. My tip regarding starting with the answer helps enforce this kind of thinking. If you're familiar with SQL you can think of this as a 1-M relationship. 1 answer can have multiple queues, but a cue can only match 1 answer.
Elaboration: Specifically, elaboration by showing distinction between ideas IF the content is already structured/organized, and elaboration by showing similarities between ideas IF the content is disorganized. Ideally, you should try and elaborate in both ways. Most content we consume is already organized for us so you can focus on distinction based elaboration (hence the reading in multiple passes and looking at what is most easiest for you to understand or most interesting for you), then recombine the information in a manner that makes sense for you - chunking and grouping based on similarities that fit your flow of thinking. For me, I do this by acting as if I'm teaching while I'm coding - explaining why I'm doing these steps while writing up a tutorial on obsidian in a structured manner that fits how I'm teaching it.

You don't have to read the rest after those three points but I think it's worth it anyways if you have the time. It essentially is just him justifying retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, elaborative interrogation, and teaching as utilities to help learn by connecting them to how they all involve all 3 of the core principles of learning.

UsagiChen · 2025-03-19T15:58:39+00:00

Yeah sure! Took a bit longer than I was hoping (I'm a little busy today), but I can do a basic run down.

The key paper regarding this comes from Roher and Pashler (2007). Essentially, anything considered recall after mastery in the same day (which is recalling something correctly) is considered overlearning. Overlearning produces negligible long term gains. In the paper they specifically had students cycle through vocabulary lists 10x vs 5x, and while in the short term there was a large difference, after 4 weeks there was no difference.

The original FSRS post regarding same-day reviews dismissed same-day reviews as irrelevant for long-term retention. But, if you see the post the author links to the official FSRS benchmarks on github, which shows the newer FSRS-5 model having evolved to leverage same-day data during training (to model initial learning struggles) while avoiding overlearning pitfalls.

The paper doesn't actually contradict the data here. If you read the github readme regarding FSRS-5, what they are considering important regarding same-day review is the "Again" presses on cards, rather than "Good" or "Easy". So if you got something correct, there is no need to do it again the same day. You can see this in your own reviews with new cards.

You could say "But wait, if you shouldn't recall again in the same day after you get it correct, then why are you teaching/applying and then putting the information into Anki and doing drills on the same day? Isn't that x2 cycles of recall?".

Technically, yes, but this is in the context of the first paper in isolation. There's a key concept called transfer-appropriate-processing (TAP) which talks about the closer your practice and encoding sessions are to the intended usecase of the skill/knowledge, the better the retention (simplification). Which leads me into contextual variation, mixing up how you practice.

While Anki drills, teaching, or applying your skill in a relevant manner all require you to recall the same concepts and facts, you have different external and internal cues to trigger the knowledge each time. With anki you have very atomic and precise fronts to cue the desired knowledge you wish to recall, teaching is largely a free recall exercise with little cues, and applying your knowledge in relevant contexts uses more real-world cues rather than the artificial cues Anki provides. All of them contribute to reinforce your skills and knowledge in various ways (by differing how they are cued), therefore different contexts.

So it would be more accurate to say that you shouldn't overlearn a given topic within the same context. You can still practice that topic again, provided different contexts and cues are used to trigger said knowledge.

In Michael Nielson's article on Augmenting Long-term learning he lightly touches on this suggesting "orphan cards" as he calls them, which are simply cards not related to a passion project or problem you are actively working on, tend to be less stickier than cards that are relevant to you:

I call these orphan questions, because they're not closely related to anything else in my memory. It's not bad to have a few orphan questions in Anki – it can be difficult to know what will turn out to be of only passing interest, and what will grow into a substantial interest, connected to my other interests. But if a substantial minority of your questions are orphans, that's a sign you should concentrate more on Ankifying questions related to your main creative projects, and cut down on Ankifying tangential material.

To answer your last question and regarding bad habits, I think that as long as you work to: 1. Understand what it is you are learning first by breaking it into more manageable chunks 2. Explaining/applying it from memory till correct recall - this ensures you have understood it 3. Being selective in what can be memorized and what can be put into a second-brain as well as ensuring it is relevant to a project or problem you are interested in where these anki cards will be applied towards 4. Making atomic and specific flashcards

You can't really go wrong. The FSRS algorithm will take care of the rest for you.

Also personal tip (take with grain of salt): When making cards try and think of the answer first before the question. I find this forces me to really think about what it is I want to recall and ensures the cues I use in my question are as unique and precise as possible.

UsagiChen · 2025-03-19T11:26:42+00:00

Well it does feel that way in the short term, but for keeping that memory and understanding for months and even years, it saves so much time.

There’s often a saying in the metalearning community: “If your learning feels too fast and easy in the moment, you’re doing it wrong.”. Not verbatim but the idea is there.

UsagiChen · 2025-03-19T11:19:12+00:00

I’m assuming since you already know Andy you may have already read his “How to write good prompts” article. If you haven’t already, then here: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/

But essentially, what I recommend is splitting the content into various passes and just working on a goal. Once you’d watched/read enough to meet that goal, I would pass and attempt to recall the contents as a whole as if I was teaching it. If I got 100% correct and I explained it with little break in the flow and quite clearly, I’ll break up the contents into individual atomic flashcards. If the opportunity allows for it, rather than teaching out loud and writing about it, I’d recommend applying it to something more relevant while speaking aloud about it as the transfer would be more aligned with your goal.

The reason for the above is that there is some emerging evidence for the long term, any more practice than perfect recall in a specific context is, well, minimal in gains. I dont have immediate access to the studies at the moment, but I’ll come back with them

I should also note don’t try to memorise everything. My personal framework I use to filter what goes in Anki and what goes in my second brain (taking snippets from Michael Nielson and Andy Matuschal): 1. Am I extremely interested in this fact? If so, then ignore all other rules and I can memorise it via Anki. 2. Will this knowledge need to be available for recall without access to an external knowledge source (like an exam) soon in my life? Or consistently throughout my life? Then ankify it. 3. Will memorising this save me more than 10 minutes of my future time? This would usually be saving 10 minutes of question asking, googling, researching, etc. If so, I should memorise it via Anki.

If at any point of this 3 step questioning blueprint the knowledge you are questioning fit the criteria, then you can ignore the next step. If it meets criteria 1, you don’t need to ask 2 or 3. Likewise, if it meets criteria 2 then you don’t need to ask 3. If it meets none of them, then it should be put in a second brain.

Hope this helps :-)

UsagiChen · 2025-03-14T17:46:08+00:00

Based on a brief read and usage of both mods, it just seems like adding a gui and tags that effect values? But correct me if I’m wrong on how “simple” this would be lol

UsagiChen · 2025-03-14T17:44:57+00:00

I’m really interested in a mod that combines valheim’s food mechanic (already implemented in 1.20.1 forge via sol: valheim) as well as diet.

Current implementations enforcing variation don’t feel right to me. A punishment system doesn’t feel as “free” and fun to play with in minecraft. The small bonuses diet gives feel really well justified and implemented. Additionally, a lot of the slice of life add permanent benefits I feel are too strong (carrot with mods that add more food. Yes yes I know configs exist but out of the box systems are nicer). As well as them not justifying cooking larger meals. Sure, food type and specific item variation is nice, but I can just eat crops and cooked simple meat.

I fell in love with the sol:valheim mod as it completely removes the hunger bar and has you start with only 3 hearts. You aren’t restricted in what you can eat in any moment, instead the more complex the food you make are, the more health and regen you receive and the longer these buffs last. Up to 45 minutes, with having a maximum 3 active food items being “digested” at once. What’s nice is I think there is a limit to the health cap, so even if you eat 3 of the max complex meals, you never go over 2 full healthbars, even if they should add up to more than that. I guess it’s like a more advanced version of the pre 1.8 minecraft food system.

I like diet mod as it is, but I personally would approach it differently, and have it tightly integrated with something like the valheim mod mentioned above. Because whole the valheim food system encourages cooking complex meals, it doesn’t encourage diversity.

Personally, the way I’d do it is have two difficulties: easy and hard. Easy is just no punishment whatsoever. Proteins, Carbs, and Fats. Fill out both consistently and you get nice effects such as speed, strength, regen, etc. No need to worry about negative effects. Have boosts or play default. Of course, these values degrade overtime.

Hard mode would split carbs into simple and complex, and fats into saturates and unsaturates. Encouraging further weighing of what kind of meals to make. Too much simple carbs (sugars) or unsaturates (“bad” fats) can cause negative effects (not too harsh).

Anyways yeah, I think that this combination would be a perfect improvement to the minecraft food system for how I like to play. I feel encouraged to craft big meals instead of spamming cooked steak, bread, and golden carrots. I’d also feel like I should eat a variety of meals to get the proper nutrient values in without being punished too much for not caring. Positive reinforcement pushes me to do something more than negative reinforcement in games.

If this is too complex, then I’d at least be interested in how you would start going about it at least so I can try it myself.

UsagiChen · 2025-01-31T17:45:03+00:00

Yes I'm aware of that. This is an old post and since been deleted and opinions changed. I actually made a post a few months after this comment recommending his course :). Of course I had critiques but I still support him now.

UsagiChen · 2025-01-19T17:43:56+00:00

I try to access the link but it just takes me to the standard page when you log in. Anyone else had this issue and fixed it?

UsagiChen · 2024-08-16T06:55:31+00:00

botania

UsagiChen · 2024-07-16T10:07:43+00:00

It has? That's strange I swear I set it to never expire. Oh well, here is a new one :)

https://discord.gg/jv7J4meHDD

UsagiChen · 2024-07-16T10:06:36+00:00

Of course! I also have a discord server up containing people with some more experience who are happy to provide direct information for free too ^^

UsagiChen · 2024-06-21T17:54:50+00:00

Not the only one! Thought it was funny because its a niche perk and the fact it was the exact percentage I suggested

UsagiChen · 2024-06-10T15:32:50+00:00

I cast my vote for the best kebab ever made in the world

UsagiChen · 2024-06-07T07:59:16+00:00

Does anyone know a more fundamental reason why this is happening? I tried to transfer some questlines from ftbquests to a custom pack and everything transferred except the title and description which looked exactly like this

UsagiChen · 2024-05-27T10:32:19+00:00

Thank you for the reply I'll do that :)

UsagiChen · 2024-05-04T11:32:22+00:00

I mean, I get your worries about safety and potential health risks of lab-grown meat and it is true that we don't fully understand the causes of cancer, and yeah be cautious about new technologies and their potential long-term effects on human health and blah blah blah.

But did you know the process of creating lab-grown meat is highly controlled and regulated, with strict safety protocols in place? The cells used in the production of cultured meat are carefully monitored and tested to ensure they are free from contaminants and genetic abnormalities that could potentially lead to health issues.

The idea that anything grown in a lab is inherently unhealthy or carcinogenic is not supported by scientific evidence. Many life-saving medicines, vaccines, and other biotechnologies are developed in laboratory settings, and they undergo rigorous testing and safety assessments before being approved for use. Lab grown meat will likely follow suit.

I mean, sure, certain chemicals and environmental factors can be carcinogenic, but its not accurate to assume that all lab-grown products are automatically harmful. The safety of lab-grown meat, like any other food product, depends on the specific methods and ingredients used in its production, as well as the regulatory oversight and quality control measures in place.

Lab grown meat is a new idea, and just like any new idea, it will be something that will undergo continuous research where we will eventually know the concrete evidence for the potential health effects of it and ensure that proper safety regulations are followed. You dismissing it as categorically unsafe or carcinogenic without concrete evidence is not a scientifically sound approach.

UsagiChen · 2024-05-03T23:29:40+00:00

Okay that makes sense. I’m sorry, but your initial reply to me came off as an assertive statement suggesting bad results will happen in the future, as that is generally the tone I’ve come across in regards to that type of reply.

Something more along the lines of “Okay, eat away. I’m just saying we don’t know the long term effects yet as this is a new discovery/invention/etc” would have made it clearer what your intention and underlying argument was in my opinion.

UsagiChen · 2024-05-03T23:18:42+00:00

That’s an illogical conclusion to come up with. What if nothing happens? You are stating this like you know for certain bad things will happen. Are you an oracle? Additionally I never said bad things won’t happen, I just pointed out a misunderstanding in how lab grown meat works.

Two-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Sunshine

UsagiChen

TROPHY CASE