What you Need to Know Before Learning to Code with Anki

I. Why Learn to Code With Anki?

Forgetting is the Status Quo

The earliest studies of memory date back to 1885 when Herman Ebbinghaus published his findings on the forgetting curve. We can see how successive reminders flatten the curve over time.

Interestingly, we find that the most efficient time to re-learn something is just when you're about to forget it. The Anki scheduler optimizes the timing between your reviews, so you only need to focus on card making.

Follow Medical Students

Medical school students rely on tools like Anki to cram vast amounts of medical knowledge into a 4 year degree. Just look at subreddits like /r/MCAT and /r/medicalschoolanki.

Escape Tutorial Hell

It's all too easy to be reliant on tutorials as a beginner (see: tutorial hell). With spaced repetition, there is no more hand-holding, instead you internalize the concepts, documentation, and processes needed for your projects.

II. Some Basic Principles

Cultivate a Collectors Mindset

For the best results, you're going to explore lots of material.

As you go about your normal coding business and inevitably come across articles and tutorials that interest you, some of those you are going to translate into cards to be drilled for later.

As a general rule. everything can be memorized, from code snippets to concepts. But you should try to understand ideas before you encode them. Anki will ensure that you can build upon previously encoded knowledge and patterns as you come across new materials.

The Power of Iteration

To get started, here is an amazing article on the rules for formatting knowledge written by Dr. Piotr Wozniak.

In general, establish, then iterate. Your cards are not going to look great from the start.

You may find a simpler explanation for a question that was initially complex as you dive more deeply into a topic. Or come across a card that contains too much info, so you'll want to split it into separate ideas.

In any case, if you want to improve the quality of your cards, they must first be created.

Don't Break the Chain

Due to the Anki scheduler, missing days will result in a growing backlog of reviews.

If you take the weekend off for example, you will have to make up for the cards missed on Saturday and Sunday. This quickly becomes cumbersome as you're greeted with 3x the expected number of reviews at the start of each week.

What can we do? One strategy is to use Anki every day. I recommend using this review heat map extension by Glutanimate to build a habit.

Insight is Emergent

Anki may not feel like it's working at first, but that's okay. Spaced repetition forces you to look at tiny details, so much so, that it's hard to see the forest for the trees.

If you stick with the program, your foundation will grow to a point where you can appreciate the bigger picture.

III. What are the drawbacks?

Time Investment

This strategy forces you to test yourself early and often, usually before you are ready.

Scott Young, author of Ultralearning, makes the analogy: "Retrieving an answer that doesn’t yet exist in your mind is like laying down a road leading to a building that hasn’t been constructed..."

But completing flash cards every day becomes a chore if you're constantly looking for knowledge. However, keep in mind that the default technique of forgetting and relearning is quite costly with respect to time.

You'll be able to pick up more difficult concepts too, once you've gotten into the groove of things because you won't have to go over core principles over and over again.

Onboarding Time

Anki is not considered newcomer friendly. But many tutorials exist today that will point you in the right direction.

If you're not sure if you want to invest the effort into your own cards just yet, there are great pre-made decks out there already that you can try. I recommend taking a look at two decks (i) Ultimate Geography and (ii) Zanki for medical school students.

📚 Additional resources

👋 Thanks for making it to the end!