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I’ve used flash cards with Anki in the past for memorizing the IPA symbols, Swedish words, and a few other things. It worked pretty well.
What I’ve realized recently while learning Rust (no Anki involved) is that, for me at least, new information needs something to “cling on” to. I wonder if this Spacing Effect is another facet of the same idea.
My process with Rust was to first read most of The Book [0], and after this I had a decent understanding and I _thought_ I’d be able to write some code. The I tried (and mostly fumbled) writing some code. But it turned out I couldn’t remember much of the syntax, nor the finer details of how the borrowing system worked. Most of the stuff I’d read hadn’t really stuck.
After some time coding I went back and reread parts of The Book that I was fuzzy on, and those things came into clearer focus, and I was able to get further with the code.
The cycle repeated itself a few times - first with basic syntax, then with how to specify generic types, then with various ways I tangled myself up with the borrow checker, then lifetimes, then how to write iterators. With each stage I needed the sum of my previous experience PLUS another visit to either The Book or Programming Rust or some other explanation. Reading it all up front wasn’t good enough; ingesting the info needed to come at the right time.
I’ve seen this a lot also with people learning to code (especially in the web dev world), where they’ll watch a whole course and then lament that they still can’t build anything on their own. I think it’s the same core issue: too much information-up-front with nothing for it to stick to.
0: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/