Using Anki to remember what you read - <AUTHOR> https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-learning-machine <comment><USER5> This article reminds me of posts about "bullet journalling" on sites like Pinterest: the optimization of the productivity process or tool (or in the case of "bullet journal" posts, the _beauty_ of the tool) is the end itself, not a means to an end. The posts are about/by "productivity" or "journalling" _enthusiasts_ and don't map well to people who are simply seeking a bit of an organization or productivity boost, not an extremely time-consuming new hobby.

The thing in this article that most reminded me about beauty-journalling posts was the todo list. In vanity journalling circles, the todo lists are full of meta-tasks "post to instagram; new journal layout; blog post about journalling" as well as pure vanity items like "yoga!; Breakfast: saffron avocado toast (yum!!)" Likewise, in this post his todo list includes items about writing about productivity, using other productivity tools, and other such "meta-productivity" items.

There's nothing wrong with this but it reveals that the "productivity" itself is the hobby, not just a means to an end.

<comment><USER6> My BS detector went off immediately when I read the link about Zettelkastens, and then I googled "Zettelkasten", and I skimmed through five different articles that were each pages long and talked over and over about how wonderful Zettelkastens are but didn't give any information about how they work or how to implement them practically. That's a pretty reliable indication that the service is the end, not a means to the end.

For the uninformed, a Zettelkasten is a searchable, unordered, labeled database. That's it.

<comment><USER7> > For the uninformed, a Zettelkasten is a searchable, unordered, labeled > database. That's it.

I could spin up ElasticSearch or something similar and have it crawl all the files on my computer and get an 80% solution. Kinda like Apple's "Finder" functionality.

<comment><USER8> Almost, but not quite. Zettlekastenicians (Zettlekasatengineers?) try to only put succinct thoughts into their systems that they can tend and grow into larger productions of thinking or learning--there are some more specialized amounts of explicit metadata (your thoughts, ideas, inspirations, questions) that cannot be crawled and indexed by machine which will only see the implicit metadata.

If you index everything together you get something that it is merely a pile of searchable things. You do not experience the "conversation" with the slip-box as Niklas Luhmann described it. Software like [http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/](http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/) that implements the "digital version" of the system suffers from what I like to describe as the "Hudsucker Proxy" problem: A young idealist visionary comes out and holds a big plastic loop and mutters "You know... for kids!" and nobody has a clue what that is supposed to mean. It isn't until someone shows how to use the "big plastic loop" before anyone understands what's happening. And that's really hard to do with something as abstract as a Zettlekasten despite it just "being little notes gathered together with lots of numbers and letters pointing at the other notes" or an "unordered database".

<comment><USER7> Now I want to find someone who uses this and follow them around for a day or two asking questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts:

1\. A lot of spaced repetition apps don't optimize for fast card creation. I like to make a card as soon as I come across something interesting, but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating. I wound up building my own app for this.

2\. Cloze deletion is surprisingly effective. For those who don't know, cloze deletion involves taking a sentence, blanking the interesting parts out e.g. "The moon landing happened on _______", and trying to recall the blank parts. This is effective because it's a quick way to make cards, thus solving the problem of slow card creation.

3\. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet.

4\. Subjectively speaking, using spaced repetition didn't just help me recall stuff in my cards, it also helped me recall stuff in general.

<comment><USER10> One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset".

I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a month (but I made time for Chinese). When I came back to the poker deck, the "spaced repetition" system was completely broken: I had a massive long list of cards that had expired, most of which I'd completely forgotten; but it just kept showing them to me in one giant loop, rather than focusing on a few to actually teach me. And I didn't even have a clean way of telling it, "Just pretend I haven't seen any of these cards at all". I ended up just deleting the deck; that discouraged me from doing anything else I wasn't willing to commit to doing every single day.

<comment><USER11> I've used Anki for about ten years, and I'm going to tell you a huge secret...

There's absolutely no need to "reset". Ever.

If you have only ten minutes to devote to Anki, then only spend ten minutes. If at some later point, you have more time, then spend that time.

Set the maximum reviews per day to something you can do most days -- for me, that's 250 cards. If you're behind, turn off 'new' cards. And eventually, you will catch up.

What if you don't do Anki for a month or two? You still don't need to reset. Anything you remember after that month will have a much longer time until you next see it.

Only use Anki as much as you have time for it. Let it figure out which cards to show you. Resetting messes with the algorithm for which cards to show.

<comment><USER12> I'm also over ten years on Anki, and I've racked up 2/3 of a million review during that time. I've taken too-long breaks several times over that time period, on a variety of subjects (decks in Anki). Sometimes years.

Each time I've gone back to a deck, I've just slugged out the few days of heavy reviews and let Anki take care of the rest. The stuff that I've forgotten, Anki will nag me with. The stuff that I've retained for years, stays retained.

One thing that I do suggest is to limit the maximum interval to 365 days, and to remove the review limit. I also tend to use the "hard" answer on cards that I've retained in decks that I've ignored for some time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just...can't relate to living this way. Maybe you have to be a special type of person, but this whole lifestyle just seems exhausting and over-managed.

<comment><USER14> I agree. In fact, what I find the most interesting part about reading is .... forgetting about it! Basically concepts will sip thru, but learning the details is just a waste of brain cells, in my opinion.

Just leave the brain do it's job, don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks, think about that bits you've just read that was interesting, then promptly forget about it. You'll forget the details, but not the backbone of it.

Details don't matter in the end. Quite frankly the idea of knowing /by heart/ the name of the greek goddess blah blah blah he uses as an example would bore me solid. Worse, anyone _knowing it and telling me about it_ would bore me solid :-)

<comment><USER15> > don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks, think about that bits you've > just read that was interesting, then promptly forget about it.

That's basically the spaced repetition model. You need to forget a little bit, so that working memory isn't saving you, and the recall process takes effort. That's what builds long term memory. Spaced repetition systems just extend that process beyond the length of the book, in a time shorter than rereading a book.

> Quite frankly the idea of knowing /by heart/ the name of the greek goddess > blah blah blah he uses as an example would bore me solid.

I agree, the names of greek gods is a bad example, unless you're a student of mythology. Spaced repetition is hard work, so probably only deploy it on things that matter. A better example might be Bayes Theorem. Incredibly powerful, but unintuitive and easily forgotten. Cards for Bayes' theorem might include the purpose: "Bayes' Theorem calculates how to adjust our prior beliefs given new evidence", as well as cards about the formula, or an intuitive visualization.

Or, maybe you want to learn more about the linux internals and spend a portion of your time memorizing the meanings of signals and errnos as a small part of a larger program of study. Sure, you can look these up in a man page, but part of the value in knowledge is knowing things exist. How many developers do you think know of SIGUSR2? Or... SIGBUS ;)

<comment><USER16> I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget. I'm more likely to forget the name of the theorem. But space repetition might be useful for formulas.

But I'm not too crazy about spaced repetition. I used it to learn all the capitals in the world, and after about a month I managed to do all of them without error. But after two years of barely using the knowledge, I only remember half.

Of course, I could keep reviewing it every few months to keep it fresh, but that's just not an efficient system, when you think of how many things I'm supposed to (and do) remember.

For me, at least, the best way to remember things is by tying them in as many associations and metaphors as I can, and that gives me a pretty reliable recall. It has some downsides: It's a bit more work than spaced repetition (requires creativity, for example), and it's not that good for unconnected data (but then, are random facts that useful anyway?). But I think that as a long-term method, it's much more solid.

<comment><USER17> I have had reasonable success using spaced repetition with math proofs (written in LaTeX). I create cards sparingly, often based on questions from problem sets which I shouldn't have gotten incorrect (i.e. the mistake stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of concepts, not a misstep in algebraic manipulation)

> I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get > them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget.

I find it too easy to trick myself into believing I understand a concept on a fundamental level. But often that "understanding" slips away, and six months later when faced with an example problem out of context I struggle to solve it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Zettelkasten has been making the rounds here this year. His process appears similar to the org-mode process using Jethro Kuan's org-roam. I've started using it and while it can be a bit tricky to set up and there's a couple mildly annoying bugs (with workarounds), for a solo project it filled the niche for me perfectly. I use it for all note taking and reading now and it is very satisfying.

[https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/](https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22337681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22337681)

<comment><USER19> Same here, org-roam just kind of "clicked" things into place for me.

I've modified a template for single-subject documents called "tags" so they're stored in ~/Org/tags/. I've also configured org-journal to store files in ~/Org/Journal/

One thing I'll be interested to discover, in the future, is how I archive or age out information. Most work stuff right now is related to a single project, so what happens when that project ends? Will I need to move things outside of ~/Org/ to remove clutter, or will I just get used to it?

<comment><USER20> Split tasks from your knowledge base. Archive tasks/projects aggressively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anki usage is huge in medical school [1]. There are a handful of huge premade decks students drill hours a day.

I think flashcards are hugely underrated for software developers. Memorization is commonly dismissed as unnecesary when we have searchable documentation and Stack Overflow, but the same argument could be had over touch typing. There is enormous value in moving data from disk to L1 cache.

If nothing else, having solid, open source, premade decks for the core web technologies would ease the path into web development for boot campers and other newcomers.

The first step in that direction is creating a text file format similar to Markdown or TOML for creating, editing and sharing flashcards. I created a hacky solution for myself [2], and another project was also shared in these comments [3].

1\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/) 2\. [https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang](https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang) 3\. [https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki](https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki)

<comment><USER22> Why not use techniques memory champions use though? Never heard of one of them using Anki. Mnemonics, imagery and memory palaces on the other hand... It's like all the amateurs swearing that steel bikes are the best when all the professionals use carbon fiber ones.

<comment><USER21> Anki and mnemonics are complementary tools. Use them both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If Anki's UI/UX turns you off, I've built an alternative called Mochi ([https://mochi.cards/](https://mochi.cards/)) that uses markdown.

Incidentally it also supports Zettelkasten like note taking like described in the article.

<comment><USER24> Looks great! I have a few questions.

\- I have a huge Zettelkasten note archive (I manage it through Sublime-Zk, which is getting a bit slow to operate it). Can I somehow directly import all my Zettel notes?

\- I tried to import my Anki cards, but it seems like while I could go through them, I couldn't assign them to any particular deck/reclassify them. They show up as part of a "Not Found" deck and I don't see any option/drag-and-drop method to move them anywhere else.

I'll definitely be giving Mochi a try. Thanks a lot for creating it!

<comment><USER23> > I have a huge Zettelkasten note archive (I manage it through Sublime-Zk, > which is getting a bit slow to operate it). Can I somehow directly import > all my Zettel notes?

You can import the markdown files as notes, but it won't maintain the linking. If you send me a sample I can look into adding a Zettelkasten specific importer.

> I tried to import my Anki cards, but it seems like while I could go through > them, I couldn't assign them to any particular deck/reclassify them. They > show up as part of a "Not Found" deck and I don't see any option/drag-and- > drop method to move them anywhere else.

Sounds like the importer derped a bit and couldn't find the deck associated with those cards. If you send me the .apkg file I can take a look. Anki's data model is a little weird and there's probably some edge cases I haven't accounted for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Was just taking a break from my Anki session to check HN.

I'm a regular user, though I'm terrible at consistent, daily reviews. I somehow manage to keep on top of it, even after skipping weekends or entire weeks. You can tweak the settings to make it easier for less-than-perfect users.

Lifehack: Anki + exercise. Combining Anki with an elliptical or stationary bike improves both my review and exercise frequency and duration.

I've made my peace with the terrible UI/UX. Like many folks here I tried to roll my own SRS app at one point. But my review sessions would always get derailed with brainstorming new features or dealing with bugs. Personally, I'm not sure that the productivity gains from improving the UI/UX are worth the development time (especially when the whole point of using Anki is efficiency).

<comment><USER26> I find it difficult to do anything intellectual while exercising at a relatively high intensity. What intensity are your workout sessions? But perhaps review is different than trying to absorb a new concept?

<comment><USER27> Personal anecdote, but there's some optima for information retention at low intensity exercise. This is around moderate to vigorous walking pace or a very slow jog.

Increase intensity beyond that point and your brain's information processing ability drops below baseline.

I've found this consistently true. At lower intensity cardio for example, I can watch educational youtube videos or follow along a movie. At high intensity, I can't even watch an action movie and follow the plot. I have to switch to music and/or a sports action video (no meaningful dialog).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >Imagine this:

>You're an 18 year old with just a high school degree. You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language, and start work with some of the brightest engineers in the world.

>Soon after, you're thrust into management. Now, you're leading teams of people who are 10 or 20 years older than you, working on one of the fastest growing internet companies of the last decade.

I can't bring myself to. It's too sweet a daydream, a fantasy that not a soul on this planet would have deigned to make reality for a black boy like myself, credentials be damned.

<comment><USER11> It happens. Where I work, the manager of programmers is from Nigeria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Some Anki-like alternatives that people may like and not have seen (mostly focused on learning languages):

\- Memrise - [https://www.memrise.com/](https://www.memrise.com/) \- Has a very extensive selection of decks for language learning

\- Supermemo - [https://www.supermemo.com/en](https://www.supermemo.com/en) \- Has a (disputed) claim that its algorithm beats Anki, various pre-made decks

\- Drops - [https://languagedrops.com/](https://languagedrops.com/) \- Mobile- only, has a higher reliance on pictures and audio over written translations.

<comment><USER30> There is also SuperMemo 18 ([https://super- memo.com/supermemo18.html](https://super-memo.com/supermemo18.html)) which is from the same people as supermemo.com except it's a desktop app with way more features but also a much higher learning curve.

If you use SM and you use anki both for a significant amount of time it's not hard to see that SM leaves you with way less reps. Anki is based on the very first version of the SuperMemo algorithm (from ~1990 or so which was the first SRS algorithm ever) known as SM2. Current version of SM uses SM18.

<comment><USER31> Too bad SM is Windows-only and desktop-only. The beauty of Anki is that you can review anywhere.

<comment><USER30> On linux you can use SM via vmware/wine and on os x it's quite usable with parallels. If you're using SRS just for language learning then being able to use on mobile can be helpful but I think for those cases supermemo.com can be a decent alternative. More generally, I think the platform specificness of SuperMemo is more than made up for with its incremental reading functionality (alongside better scheduling algorithm)

<comment><USER32> > On linux you can use SM via vmware/wine

To add to this, there's a set of Winetricks recipes for running SM on Linux.[0] (Disclaimer: I haven't tried them, though I've been planning to, for a while.)

[0] [https://github.com/alessivs/supermemo- wine](https://github.com/alessivs/supermemo-wine)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FTA :

>>> It's nothing crazy. Here's an example from a very real non-work day:

Followed by a pretty long list.

How does he do ? There are 23 items on the list. None of which include daily tasks such as : dishes, sport, talking to family, to friends, eating, cooking, washing clothes, having a social life. All of these tasks take a lot of time, esp. if I consider the time to switch between them (which can be quite long since, hey, it's a non work day, so I'm slower...).

We're not equals.

<comment><USER34> Do do the same thing this guy and do all the things you mentioned. I create cards on sundays only and i do anki every morning before i start working. It can be accomplished easily, sans children.

<comment><USER35> but that list is >8hrs of back to back chores (according to his estimates) for a non-work day without any of the ones your parent post mentions. I don't think that's realistic.

<comment><USER36> I imagine that the subject of the article is one of those genetic mutants who only requires 4-6 hours of sleep a day. They do exist, but are definitely statistical outliers.

Not needing 9 hours of sleep is the only real way to add time to your day.

<comment><USER37> Not only that, I also require "offline" time to relax otherwise I become very weird emotionally and I start dreading everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For Japanese learners, I built two iOS apps that cater to the special needs of the language.

Manabi [0] is a flashcard app with the same algorithm as Anki but nicer UI.

Manabi Reader [1] collects a bunch of short-form reading materials, lets you tap words to look them up, and tap to add a flashcard. It tracks the individual words you read and charts your progress word by word and kanji by kanji. This app has gotten pretty popular so I have been improving it substantially.

[0] [https://manabi.io](https://manabi.io)

[1] [https://reader.manabi.io/](https://reader.manabi.io/)

<comment><USER39> That looks really interesting, I'll definitely give this a try. How did you decide on the reading materials to use? There's obviously so much to choose from, I'm wondering what criteria you might use.

<comment><USER38> Let me know what you think!

The app is a (very heavily) dressed-up RSS reader. I maintain a list of reading sources and add them so long as they're not going to have overly sensitive material (eg someone suggested an anonymous blog with short and colorful posts from contributors reflecting on their lives, but some of the posts talk about self-harm) or be too niche. I'm most interested in feeds that get regularly updated with new content, or where they have a trove of existing content. Also always looking out for content that's good for absolute beginners.

Some RSS feeds require additional work in the app to transform their content to make them work nicely with the reader mode, so I also take that into account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This will probably get down-voted by the hacker news crowd. Information aggregation from diverse sources to construct a comprehensive knowledge graph in our heads and hence further and deepen our understanding of this world and the context in which things happen can be a goal. But at some point, the methods we use to accomplish them can take more importance than the actual goal. The method is not the goal.

This is similar to how there are many rituals in every religion that people might follow without understanding the underlying concepts. The rituals are not the religion but we still see people mindlessly doing things that their ancestors did.

I would much prefer that we build systems that automatically create that knowledge graph objectively (like the wikipedia) and layer an AI system on top that will create new connections, even with brute force, that our minds in a lifetime cannot. This will not stop us from having opinions. People will still come to different conclusions based on the same underlying data but atleast the data and the surrounding context will be available to all.

<comment><USER41> The point of Anki is to learn while making the cards, because making them takes mental effort and requires enough comprehension of the concepts. It would be harder and less motivating to use something premade, that maybe gives priority to concepts that don't really interest you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Anki (and spaced repetition) is awesome! Some things I've had used it for to great success:

1\. Memorizing Japanese vocabulary, pitch-accent, and basic grammar rules. It would probably be useful, at least to some degree, for any language like this.

2\. Any certification which required strict memorization. All the basic ComptTIA certs were like this, and the CCNA:R&S cert (unfortunately) required memorizing commands and their syntax.

3\. Verses in the Bible (though this is pretty basic in comparison, just Address <-> Text).

In all honestly I think one of the best things you can do if you need to memorize something is make the flash cards yourself, whether with Anki, another app, or even just index cards. This forces you to think about what it is that you're trying to memorize and phrase the text of the cards in a way that you understand. After that, reviewing is just kind of "maintenance" in my opinion. There was definitely a marked difference in my retention when I was using pre-made Anki decks vs. creating them myself. It is also easier to create cards using the desktop app.

It's a side note, but I also don't agree with Anki's pricing model. The app is free on Android[1] but $25 on iOS[2]. I think I heard (I don't have a source) that the developer's justification was that they needed to make money from the all the time and effort they spent creating Anki, plus hosting costs, etc - <USER3> why not do a cheaper price on both Android/iOS, or do a free-to-download app with a subscription model? For what it's worth you can use the web version on iOS but the app is a better experience IMO.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki)

[2] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile- flashcards/id373493...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile- flashcards/id373493387)

<comment> barry-cotter > I also don't agree with Anki's pricing model. The app is free on Android[1] > but $25 on iOS[2]. I think I heard (I don't have a source) that the > developer's justification was that they needed to make money from the all > the time and effort they spent creating Anki, plus hosting costs, etc - <USER3> > why not do a cheaper price on both Android/iOS, or do a free-to-download app > with a subscription model

People with money overwhelmingly buy iPhones. $25 is a pittance for anyone who can afford an iPhone. Anybody who uses Anki seriously gets far, far more value than $25 out of it. I used it for well over 200 hours before I stopped and I know I'll go back to it again.

The Android version is not maintained by the developer of Anki. The iPhone app is. He chooses to charge for the iPhone app, which enables him to make a living making tens of thousands of people's lives better.

If you don't want to spend the price of two pizzas on an app that the modal user will use for over a hundred hours don't.

<comment><USER10> > People with money overwhelmingly buy iPhones. $25 is a pittance for anyone > who can afford an iPhone. Anybody who uses Anki seriously gets far, far more > value than $25 out of it. I used it for well over 200 hours before I stopped > and I know I'll go back to it again.

I used Anki's web interface from my phone for about 6 months before I bought the iOS app. Then about 4 years after using the app almost every day, I sent them another $25 donation. I got way more than $50 worth of value out of it over the 10 years that I used it.

(I've now written my own study tool for Chinese which fixes some of the issues with using flashcards for language learning. Maybe at some point it will show up on "Show HackerNews"; but it's slow going when you've only got a few hours a week.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I use it for interview prep. I know some people advise against memorizing stuff in programming but it's been effective for me so far. You can spend 3-5 minutes in an interview trying to reason about implementing the partition method of a quicksort or translating 2D array indexes into 1d. With anki you can just regurgitate it out of your deep memory in 30 seconds whether you use it in your day to day or not.

<comment><USER44> Would an intervier be more likely to pass you if you were clearly recalling a memorized answer? That sounds so worthless... If I was interviewing I would switch to a different question.

<comment><USER43> In a world where you are expected to solve 2 leetcode medium-hard questions in 30 minutes with no syntax errors and test cases.... I doubt it. The questions come in different forms with optimizations, it's not about memorizing answers it's "pattern matching" and being efficient in implementation.

A partition method would be part of a larger implementation you still have to reason through and talk through. You just remember that the quicksort of the top half starts at pivot+1 instead of pivot, etc. Essentially you eliminate the little mistakes people tend to make when they are nervous

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> [https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies- tips-a...](https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-tips-and- tricks-for-spaced-repetition-anki/#adding_cards)

A bit of a self-post, but I've compiled a list of Anki tips I've learned and found. My deck is about 14,000 cards over the last few years - so I've learned a bit from my own mistakes :)

</comment><comment><USER46> Using Anki is less important than keeping relevant and _digested_ notes. I use Anki daily but I don't really need to memorize everything. It's enough to be able to fast retrieve previous collected info. In the end I just don't want to repeat myself. For that I simply use one searchable text file (and a github public repository - to maintain some quality - for digested notes/cheatsheets).

</comment><comment><USER47> I sometimes wonder if tools like Anki aren't just another form of procrastination. The time invested could probably be better spent.

<comment><USER29> It depends what you're doing. I mainly use it for learning vocabulary.

I'm learning German and Anki is nothing short of amazing. I'm easily able to learn ~20 words a day primarily just practicing on my phone during bathroom breaks.

On the other hand I'm also learning Russian and Anki just doesn't work. Words won't stick in my head the way they do with German.

I've heard very numerous accounts of it being great for Japanese.

<comment><USER48> >On the other hand I'm also learning Russian and Anki just doesn't work. Words won't stick in my head the way they do with German.

Because (for English speakers) Russian is harder than German. You need to reduce the number of words learned per day. Japanese is even harder to learn, but you have to be persistent. I spent more than an hour every single day for several years straight to learn the vocabulary.

Also there's a unique challenge with Russian is that nouns, verbs and adjectives are all conjugated, and the rules are quite complex. The noun cases would be completely foreign to non-Slavic language speaker. Even if you learn the vocabulary, using it in sentences is not trivial at all.

<comment><USER49> Just going to be a bit nitpicky here. Noun declension is a feature of various non-slavic languages, including Latin which English speakers have a decent chance of having been exposed to.

Modern Russian has 6 cases (with a couple more that pop up very rarely) with 3 genders and singular/plural endings. It's a total of 36 possible combinations, which is not that bad. Masculine and neuter also share most endings so there aren't actually 36 unique ones

Probably the most difficult thing about cases when I was learning Russian was remembering which verbs took a different case than I would expect, e.g. dative instead of accusative for what seems like a direct object.

<comment><USER50> Right: but one difference (which you sort of hint at) is that German is consistent in why something takes a particular case compared to Slavic languages (e.g. direction vs location), and at least the preposition is consistent. Is it "nad morze" or "nad morzem"? No way to know without the entire sentence. And "morzem" is the "tool case" \-- the form you usually use to describe that something happens with the help of a tool even though the sea (morze) is not at all a tool in that sentence. Oh, and you only use "nad" with bodies of water by the way. Sorry!

Another incredibly tricky one for Slavic languages is imperfective vs perfective aspects. In most other languages, perfect vs imperfect is just a standard construction. In Polish (and Russian, though my examples here are Polish), you change the verb itself. How? Well, sometimes you put "po" in front of it, like rozmawiać / porozmawiać. Sometimes it's "z" (jeść / zjeść), sometimes "u", "na" or "wy". And sometimes you just give up, like oglądać (but obejrzeć in the perfective), widzieć (zobaczyć), mowić (powiedzieć).

(For this reason I have found it very hard to progress in Polish without conversation with native speakers who aren't too polite to correct me.)

<comment><USER49> Yes, perfective and imperfective aspects are very tricky, particularly how they interact with various other linguistic features: imperatives (and the negative imperative), the subjunctive, and verbs of motion come to mind, each of which modifies the use of the aspects in it's own way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm starting out on a similar Zettelkasten style database/wiki _thing_ using org-roam and org-journal on Emacs. I find the entire concept fascinating and I'm surprised at how enthusiastic I am with this subject.

I'm still refining the workflows and discovering how it interacts with my own idiosyncrasies. The basic setup is:

1) Take daily notes in a hardback A4 sized square dotted journal. Mark shorter tasks/notes as completed when done.

2) Sweep "stuff that needs to be remembered" into org-journal daily entries, once or twice a day. Also add interesting web page links with a short description. And "nice to have" ideas, things like that.

3) Link from those daily notes to other planning or project org-mode notes using org-roam. Write quick outlines of documents.

4) At the beginning of the doc, those planning/project org docs have links to various single-subject docs. Those links are considered "tags" so a taxonomy is slowly being built up.

Org-roam shows you backlinks from docs, daily notes, etc, so you can begin to see what is connected. There's also a graphviz output you can generate to get a more graphical view of the links.

Things I'd like to be able to do, but haven't yet coded or learned the Lisp to do so:

1) Sync/Import bookmarks and their tags from Firefox. I've got a _lot_ of bookmarks that I've tagged, it would be nice to be able to link those 2 sets of tags.

2) Figure out some sort of end-of-week-review process or multi-doc view. Something for me to look at all the stuff I added that week, and a way for me to push stuff into next week.

</comment><comment><USER51> I used a lot of space repetition previously, but I've found a lot of issues with it

\- Most of what I learned is not useful knowledge in anki. I made many variations of different decks, some for programming and some for other concepts

\- Space repetition - the concept itself is built in many different places. For instance, google will remind me of photos that I took last year on my phone. I can check up instagram and facebook to see things my friends are doing and be reminded of things we've done. I can message people and be reminded of things too, or throw parties and likewise be hit with space- repetition if done frequently enough.

don't get me wrong though, space repetition is useful especially for learning a topic that requires a lot of vocabulary. The best way to learn something is just to be fully immersed into it, if you practice it daily you basically are applying the space-repetition algorithm in practice.

If you want to learn a new language, move to the country that speaks said language.

There's a lot of wasted time and effort in making cards and determining what is "Fringe value" \- cards that expire and offer no values long term

If you want to remember things about people you care about, just message them pictures of things you;ve done together. No need to make a rolodex CRM like some of my friends do, its a waste of effort and time imo.

What anki really shines though again is language learning, or learning something with a lot of barrier-to-entry vocab. This is especically true for medical industry based applications

I practice what I use everyday and immerse myself in many programming communities and I've found that I've learned and retained information far more effectively when it's shared b/w many different perspectices and contextes

</comment><comment><USER52> Reminds me of the open-source app Polar[1], which allows you to create Anki flashcards while you read.

[1] [https://getpolarized.io](https://getpolarized.io)

</comment><comment><USER53> Is Anki a trademark? If someone wants to make a tool called AnkiSuper, is that allowed? I'm not a big fan of the UI/UX. So I am thinking of scratching an itch.

<comment><USER54> Is the format open source?

<comment><USER55> The desktop app is GPL and it's all backed by a Sqlite db so it's possible to reverse engineer.

<comment><USER54> That requires a lot more effort, and it's error prone.

You don't want to get it wrong because you may corrupt people's data

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ad "Zettelkasten" and how you "converse" with it (that's how I [mis]understood it):

Luhmann started out by doing these things:

* He had sequ. numbered cards, that were written on until they were full and therefore could contain multiple topics - and one topic could therefore also be on multiple cards (no. 1,7,15), if he later added to it

* He had a topic index to map card numbers to topics

* Most important: he used this system with slight variations continuously over years and it was a one person system

The benefit (that you can get with a personal wiki too, if you follow the system with Plugins) is, that when you get all cards on a topic, you also get the information on the topic you wrote down right before and after thinking about the topic you are researching...

As information organisation and knowledge is a personal thing, retrieving info from the cards with the other topics you thought of right before and after, might lead to subconscious connections that

\- and here is the "conversation" -

then lead to your brain making connections that go beyond what you wrote down on the cards... at least that is how Luhmann described it... could anyone follow my little mental jump session?

</comment><comment><USER57> Is someone here running an Anki sync server[1]?

I would be keen to know about the experience of setting it up and maintaining it. The github project doesn't seem active, which I always find fishy for server applications.

[1] [https://github.com/ankicommunity/anki-sync- server](https://github.com/ankicommunity/anki-sync-server)

</comment><comment><USER58> Has anyone ever created an anki deck from their college coursework that would have allowed them to pass verbal exams 10 years later?

<comment><USER59> Depends on the course, the exam as well as how long you used spaced repetition. The next time Anki will ask me what "å sløse" means is in over five years and I'm pretty sure I won't have forgotten it by then. For exams that rely less on memorization this might be different. I'm pretty sure that even if I remember all definitions from my measure theory course I still wouldn't be able to pass the exam in 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Spaced practice and retrieval practice, both of which are used in SRS, are two learning techniques for which there is ample evidence that they actually work [0].

Of course, You still need to decide what is worth remembering.

[0] [https://www.learningscientists.org/](https://www.learningscientists.org/)

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm using Anki for language learning sparingly (I know it defeats the purpose, but still...) What I haven't figured out it how to automatically create Anki cards from the words I'm looking up in a dictionary. I'm at a point where I rarely stumble upon words I don't understand, and they are usually rare enough to not meet again for a long time, long enough to completely forget them.

What I want is something that could catch me opening dictionary by double- tapping in CoolReader and add the shown entry to my Anki. Doing it manually breaks the flow and immersion so I can't really do it while reading.

<comment><USER62> Does your dictionary have a search history? That's how I add new cards. Every day before reviewing, I check the list of terms I looked up and then create cards for those I think will be useful to remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> My problem with Anki was years ago and was how hard it was to programmatically create/modify decks. The database was a pain and not documented anywhere I could find. Took some work and just digging through it the hard way. I just wanted to take a deck and lookup one bit in a dictionary and add a new field for that looked up bit to a card all automagically. Not an easy thing to do. Unless you want to learn the GUI bits, and maybe not even then. It was easy enough to create a new deck, but hard to bulk add new information to an existing deck that you've been studying.

</comment><comment><USER64> Readwise.io user here, and I love it. Readwise helps me remember what I read (not just books, but articles too). I get sent a daily email with three excerpts/highlights and it quickly refreshes my memory. Books seem like a better investment for me now because I'm not just forgetting them.

BTW, you can choose as many or few excerpts as you want, and what books / articles as well.

If the good folks at Readwise are reading this comment: I'd love to see an Android app with OCR capability. I read "dead tree" versions of books from time-to-time and want to save those highlights.

<comment><USER65> recently tried it out as well, and i'm really impressed [especially with the ability to import highlights from instapaper and the kindle clippings file]

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Reminds of when I was starting to learn Japanese! [https://github.com/miyamoto-san/hiragana](https://github.com/miyamoto- san/hiragana)

</comment><comment><USER67> Does anyone know if Anki or a similar app can handle importing from a text document or spreadsheet?

I have a ton of things I need to learn for my job, and I already have a text document full of notes and definitions. I'd like to assemble everything on my PC and then have flashcards on my phone. I also need to control the syncing because I'd be making cards with the company secret sauce and can't sync to anything but our corporate google drive/docs account.

Having an app that pulls the cards from a google sheets doc would be awesome.

<comment><USER68> The Anki app does indeed import from CSV files, and you can choose what delimiter character it will use to separate fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I recently tried instead of remembering stuff with anki, trying to get to the root cause / why of what I try to remember, it's usually a tree meaning the outcomes of what I used to enter to anki was way too many things, and the causes of these items were much fewer, once I get the causes of what I try to enter to anki, I can derive the anki cards just by deducing them. Not perfect but better than having hundreds of anki cards to remember.

</comment><comment><USER70> One anti-feature makes me go away every time I return to give Anki another try: lack of a "dismiss once and forever" button. Many decks I'd like to study contain too many cards I already _know_. Yet I can only choose how easy it was so it would decide how often to repeat it, it won't let me choose "it's easier than saying my own name, don't repeat it ever".

<comment><USER55> I use the suspend card (or note) command for this. Press @ when your reviewing and it will suspend the card and you won't see it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I wrote a quick script today to use Airtable and Python Flask to do a simple Spaced Repetition. Need to add the following fields in Airtable: Front, Back, Scores (long text), NextReviewAt (date with GMT time).

[https://gist.github.com/abhiyerra/7a7c31d7e695010e0bd0669c7c...](https://gist.github.com/abhiyerra/7a7c31d7e695010e0bd0669c7cf18885)

</comment><comment><USER72> Why would you want to remember everything you read? That sounds like overtraining.

It's not clear that managing and drilling on so much information offers a significant improvement over what is likely the most important intervention mentioned: reading widely and with purpose.

Sure flashcards can help you remember things you need to memorize. But it's not clear they should become a way of life and an end in their own.

<comment><USER73> > It's not clear that managing and drilling on so much information offers a > significant improvement over what is likely the most important intervention > mentioned: reading widely and with purpose.

I think you're in agreement with the original article. The individual _is_ reading widely and with purpose. He uses Anki to assist in remembering. And that's the general guidance with Anki (or spaced repetition generally): learn first, recall later. You read, develop an understanding (at least partial), build your deck, and study with the deck while continuing to read the later material and building the deck up further.

And you don't try to remember _everything_ , again from the article:

> When I come across something in a book that seems useful to understand and > remember, I will highlight it on my Kindle and add a note to it with the > text: ".flash".

He doesn't highlight _everything_ , just things that seem important. The importance is that many things are outside your particular field of work. But you have to interface with people who work in those domains (or want to), or you just want to have more knowledge to draw on. If you aren't using the information frequently, it won't come to mind when you need it. So with Anki you can have a relatively lightweight way to keep the jargon of another field re-callable, or to have the history of a place or people at hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I would better endeavor to digest the content and let it be forgotten than to spend time organize it and remember it repeatedly.

</comment><comment><USER75> Anki is rather old, SuperMemo in latest versions is generally better. They're related.

The unanswered question here is why and how to make these methods of training automatic, as in that you do not need a tool or a calendar or a papet database to run them. There are some other mnemonic methods available but efficacy is unproven.

</comment><comment><USER76> A paper notebook would be so much worse. You would have to carry it with you physically (which is clearly an unconscionable imposition), it can't show you relevant ads, and it cannot send every glyph you scrawl to Google, Microsoft, and the NSA. How could people ever use tech like that?

</comment><comment><USER77> Generally speaking, I don't believe reading more books helps your thinking better than going back to smaller amount of books, unless you just need the knowledge to be used for now. Memorizing is not good enough when reading a good book; it requires more time thinking than reading to grasp the essence of a good book.

</comment><comment><USER78> And in 2020 I stil struggle to export my Kindle highlights from sideloaded books (not bought from Amazon). And even if I did, I haven't found a note system that lets me centralize all the notes I gather from web, documents and my Kindle.

Maybe one of you can come up with a piece of service and make me tear up a little.

<comment><USER79> Have you tried [https://readwise.io](https://readwise.io)? I export my kindle highlights from sideloaded books through an iphone app and send them to firstname.lastname@example.com. That's better then downloading and uploading the txt file. Web is also covered. Dunno about your docuemnts though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I had the problem where it felt too time consuming making the cards and I just wanted to start off learning a few cards at a time, so I made my own solution. Its free [https://www.flashcardmax.com/download](https://www.flashcardmax.com/download)

</comment><comment><USER81> For a companion post, there was an Ask HN post yesterday [1] asking people why they don't use spaced repetition.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22484060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22484060)

</comment><comment><USER82> Does anybody know how to get the LaTeX stuff working on MacOS? I've been wanting to memorize a number of mathematical formulae, but I haven't been able to find clear step-by-step instructions for building LaTeX cards.

<comment><USER83> Do the instructions here not work for you? [https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#latex- support](https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#latex-support)

If you have Latex installed on your machine and have used it before, the process of getting starting should be pretty straightforward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I get a feeling that these little jewels of knowledge that we come across get store in our subconscious. And that my brain will pick it up when I need it, although I can't list them all if asked to. Maybe I'm wrong :)

</comment><comment> tokamak-teapot I've used Anki for months, trying to learn the Greek alphabet. I've failed. I don't think I've learned more than one or two of its letters.

Is it possible I'm just not compatible with the way this works? Any tips on alternatives?

<comment><USER85> Maybe Anki isn't a tool for you. I personally don't use Anki because it bores me to death. For me it needs to be interesting. I think there are other people out there who even don't use Anki because it's a boring way to learn something.

<comment><USER86> Spaced repetition really clicked for me when I realized that it isn't about learning, but about keeping memories fresh. If you don't have an emotional attachment to each card in the deck, reviews become a terrible slog. Mine is a mix of random insights I've had, photos of places I've been, summaries of things I've learned, etc. The questions are simply there to force me to engage my memory, which drags up the whole web of mental associations— there's no need to add every detail explicitly; that's what notes are for.

<comment><USER87> Yes yes, I agree. The way I tackle the threat of detachment from my cards is to aggressively delete cards as soon as I see boredom creeping in. I switched from Anki to Supermemo, though. Much better for managing context and even keeping organized notes that may or may not be used for active recall at some later point.

<comment><USER30> Can't reply to child for some reason but the reason that SM is so great for managing content is a feature called incremental reading ([https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading](https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading)). To sum it poorly, it lets you go through hundreds of articles in parallel and slowly convert them to active recall material over time. It sounds terribly complicated in practice, and learning it is indeed a pain, but once you know it there's really no way of learning more enjoyable. I can promise you that.

I don't understand how anki users are able to make cards for non-language things,I personally absolutely hate making cards while reading anything. It's hard to explain the exact process but incremental reading by contrast makes it much easier to take what's really important from an article and make cards from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I usually write a book review post on my blog that contains these highlights. Whenever I need to recall something, I am reading my own posts.

I guess this is similar to spaced repetition.

</comment><comment><USER89> I don't know which kindle OP uses, but there's already a built-in feature called "vocabulary builder" which uses spaced repetition.

</comment><comment><USER90> Writing works. On pen and paper. I keep journals on everything. I have a series of journals on books I've read and what I thought about them. Writing tends to be the key.

</comment><comment><USER91> Am I the only one who can't stand cloze deletion? When I use it I just end up with memorizing the words around the deletion and pattern matching the middle.

</comment><comment><USER92> And now I feel hopeless again. How can someone get better at so many things so fast that too in tech?? I still myself noob after all these years.

<comment><USER93> I mean...they don't. Did you read the article? He's not in tech, he's in management -- he doesn't need to know jack.

<comment><USER31> Hi ruby / vim / bash repo says otherwise (in terms of knowledge... whether or not he needs it is up for debate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Just tried to use it. What's with the Anki UX? You can't just install the mobile app and start downloading shared decks to use.

<comment><USER95> I believe the mobile app is limited to just studying. Creating new cards and downloading shared decks must be done using either the desktop app or the web app.

<comment><USER96> You can definitely create new cards in the official mobile app (for iOS).

<comment><USER95> I stand corrected. My recollection was that AnkiDroid (the Android app) didn't provide the capability of creating new cards, but I just checked and the current version of AnkiDroid does let you create new cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Good luck to him and his system. This line amazed me by how underwhelming it was "The core of the system is highlighting."

<comment><USER98> I dont understand the sarcasm. The core of most ideas is simple, wouldn't you agree? I've always struggled with retaining what I read, and "highlighting" is not an obvious answer.

<comment><USER97> Highlighting is an obvious answer. Children do it at school. I wish the guy well, but it's as I said, underwhelming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Classic Simon

</comment><comment><USER100> When you just memorize you lose intuition which is the far more useful portion of learning.

<comment><USER101> I disagree. Many times when I read technical books I understand the concepts and ideas but I end up forgetting the actual name of the concept or idea. Then when I heard someone talking about it or mentioning somewhere I can't remember which one was it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> I created a spaced repetition app that combines aspects of Pocket and Instapaper with a spaced repetition learning model. It's helped me get more value of the content I consume online.

[https://retaino.com](https://retaino.com)

</comment><comment><USER103> Substack is a YC W18 startup for those wondering (I was!)

</comment><comment><USER104> Is it a sane thing to do (cram every bit of knowledge in your head)?

I have a feeling that it's futile and could even be a bad thing for mental health and sanity.

<comment><USER105> Hey kids in school memorize baseball scores, league position, all the characters in Star Wars. It's very normal for people to remember/memorize things. A trick to do it more efficiently isn't going to drive anybody crazy.

<comment><USER104> They don't do it in a mechanical way attempting to maximize recall.

It's another thing to try to stuff absolutely every bit of information you've encountered in your head with lots of effort.

From reading HN I get a feeling (could be wrong feeling) that western society is always obsessed with something (or perhaps every society, but it's easier to notice this from the outside).

If it's money - you need to grab all the money you can get. If it's time - <USER4> are obliged to do something productive every second of your waking hours. And you must also find a way to sleep much less than 7-8 hours in order to maximize "productive" time.

Now you must also remember every bit of information you've seen.

It feels creepy and definitely doesn't feels sane thing to do.

What if I earned all the money in the world? What does it change?

What if I do something "productive" every second of my life? I would probably hate such life.

What's the point of trying to remember every detail from the book about telegraph history and ancient philosophy?..

This obsession feels really weird to me.

<comment><USER105> Disagree. Kids will do it in a mechanical way to maximize recall. Kids will obsess over all kinds of things.

Harnessing this for fun or profit is normal human behavior.

All those strawmen - I'll leave that for another time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Memorizing anything in the age of Google is damn right foolish.

<comment><USER107> I disagree. Have you tried learning a new language?

<comment><USER106> It's funny you asked, I'm actually learning a new foreign language this year, and I'm doing just fine without memorizing anything. Based on my method and goals, I'll be able to speak at least 20 languages before the end of next year.</comment></comment></comment>


Learn Vim in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://21-lessons.com/2020/07/06/learn-vim-in-2020-from-the-ground-up/ <comment><AUTHOR> At user groups and in online communities they keep talking about Vim and how cool it is to use this text editor. Let's explore what all the Fuzz is about.</comment>


Pssst... your Rails application has a secret to tell you - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3091-pssst-your-rails-application-has-a-secret-to-tell-you

<comment><USER2> Is anyone offering statsd as a service? Interested in trying it out, but don't want to maintain it.

<comment><USER3> (author of the original post)

I'm not aware of anyone offering it as a service, and I don't know how well it would work. Since it's all UDP, there's risk of data loss. We experience essentially no loss within our network (less than one one-hundredth of a percent in testing), but not sure what things would look like going elsewhere.

I know what you mean about fearing the maintenance -- in particular, getting the node.js statsd daemon, Graphite, and Whisper (the default storage and front-ends, in Python) running can be pretty tricky and intimidating. I'd suggest taking a look at the alternate implementations out there -- etsy has a list at <https://github.com/etsy/statsd/wiki>, and there are a few more not on there as well -- and see if any of them seem more your speed. For us, we really didn't want to introduce a whole extra set of infrastructure requirements to run a Django app and accouterments, which is how we landed on using our own implementation (in Ruby).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay $20/mo to trade equity options? - <AUTHOR> Jellifin is a flat rate mobile options trading platform. We are conducting a market research to see if users would pay $20/mo to execute 10 trades or 50 options contract per month. Currently this is a significant discount compared to paying $10+$0.75 per contract to trade options. Let us know what you think. Thanks for your input. www.jellifin.com <comment><USER2> the "democratization" of the brokerage account. why do I still need to pay outrageous prices to make HTTP requests.</comment>


The Man Who Saved Southwest Airlines with a '10-Minute' Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2015/06/28/418147961/the-man-who-saved-southwest-airlines-with-a-10-minute-idea <comment><USER2> A great example for lead bullets: [http://www.bhorowitz.com/lead_bullets](http://www.bhorowitz.com/lead_bullets)

<comment><USER3> > The issue with their ideas was that we weren't facing a market problem. The > customers were buying; they just weren't buying our product. This was not a > time to pivot.

A true gem, it's very important to make this distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recommend reading Great by Choice [1] which talks more about Southwest Airlines and what makes them great. The book is about "10X companies" and what they have in common, but also what they do differently from their competitors. For example, Southwest Airlines copied PSA's business model verbatim but PSA [2] went out of business. The book talks about why. The main reason I like the book and others in the series [1] is that it is like reading a really long research paper about what makes great companies great with entertaining anecdotes sprinkled in.

1\. [http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html](http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines)

<comment><USER5> I don't consider Southwest Airlines great at all. They are my least favorite airline to fly. I've experienced some pretty terrible customer service from them. I feel their boarding routine is the worst in the business.

What, in your opinion, makes them "great"?

<comment><USER6> From an article attached to the book:

"From an initial list of 20,400 companies, we sifted through 11 layers of cuts to identify cases that met all our tests (our study era ran through 2002). Only seven did. We labeled our high-performing study cases with the moniker "10X" because they didn't merely get by or just become successful. They truly thrived. Every 10X case beat its industry index by at least 10 times. Consider one 10X case, Southwest Airlines (LUV). Just think of everything that slammed the airline industry from 1972 to 2002: Fuel shocks. Deregulation. Labor strife. Air-traffic controller strikes. Crippling recessions. Interest rate spikes. Hijackings. Bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy. And in 2001, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. And yet if you'd invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines on Dec. 31, 1972 (when it was just a tiny little outfit with three airplanes, barely reaching breakeven and besieged by larger airlines out to kill the fledgling), your $10,000 would have grown to nearly $12 million by the end of 2002, a return 63 times better than the general stock market. These are impressive results by any measure, but they're astonishing when you take into account the roiling storms, destabilizing shocks, and chronic uncertainty of Southwest's environment. Meanwhile, Southwest's direct comparison, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), flailed and was rendered irrelevant, despite having the same business model in the same industry with the same opportunity to become great."

Src: [http://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by- choice.html](http://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "You guys are either going to turn these airplanes in 10 minutes or I'm > going to fire every single one of you — and I'm going to hire a whole new > crew that's willing to work and turn these airplanes in 10 minutes."

Sounds like a great way to fail spectacularly. If it _was_ impossible, it wasn't going to magically work just because everyone was too afraid to tell him.

<comment><USER8> It worked in this instance. Sometimes your boss is just a tool and you suffer the consequences.

I specifically advised my boss not to sell a certain hardware and software combination because it was problematic. In fact eventually the vendor dropped all support. But one of our sales guys got dollar signs in his eyes and sold it anyway to a customer of ours.

Sure enough I was regularly sent out to "do something" to fix it because the systems kept crashing. Finally my boss gave me one of those "if you don't fix it today, don't bother coming back to work tomorrow" ultimatums. What exactly am I supposed to do? Rewrite the network driver for this LAN card myself? That was my last day on the job.

I heard from a friend the company had to rip the entire network out and give a new one free to customer after he threatened to sue. I never did hear if the sales guy had to pay for it.

<comment><USER9> >I never did hear if the sales guy had to pay for it.

Yeah - that's not on the salesperson. The basic 'social contract' when someone takes a sales job is that the product the company sells isn't a fraudulently useless piece of crap.

The salesperson didn't design, spec, or build the hardware. He didn't architect or write the drivers, he didn't QA the product, and he damn sure didn't assume the company would sell something that didn't/couldn't work.

Where the hell was your QA manager? Your product manager? Those are the folks that should be responsible for this - not the salesperson.

<comment><USER10> > Yeah - that's not on the salesperson. The basic 'social contract' when > someone takes a sales job is that the product the company sells isn't a > fraudulently useless piece of crap.

It is not unambiguous, but I got the impression from this paragraph that the salesperson sold it _despite_ directives to the contrary, which surely _is_ on him or her:

> I specifically advised my boss not to sell a certain hardware and software > combination because it was problematic. In fact eventually the vendor > dropped all support. But one of our sales guys got dollar signs in his eyes > and sold it anyway to a customer of ours.

<comment><USER9> Sales teams can't sell anything that operations and product management don't approve. A customer can send in a PO for anything, but the company has to accept it...

<comment><USER8> I explained in my reply if you'd like a better explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. I never knew about this, and it certainly isn't true of Southwest today. These days they're the cattle-car of airlines, with their lack of assigned seating.

I found this bit particularly interesting, though:

> Today, the task of getting in and out of the gate in 10 minutes is > impossible — but back then, says reporter Terry Maxon, the 10-Minute Turn > saved the airline.

What makes it so impossible? Airport security has gotten far worse, but that's long before the gate. _At_ the gate, what makes this less possible than it was back then?

<comment><USER12> > with their lack of assigned seating.

I'm pretty sure unassigned seating has been proven to be the fastest way to load an aircraft in practice.

> what makes this less possible than it was back then?

I'm not sure, I'd guess there are controls in place now that were not in place then e.g. passenger manifest reconciliation for security, ID checks, etc.

Ryanair (European Southwest essentially) target 25 minutes. If there were a way to do if faster I think they'd have found it.

<comment><USER13> > I'm pretty sure unassigned seating has been proven to be the fastest way to > load an aircraft in practice.

I would disagree with this. My experience is of low-cost operators in Europe (Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizz etc.), and I believe their experiences have been the opposite. Whilst most of the carriers used to operate on an unassigned seating basis, with fees for reserved seating, now seating is 'randomly' assigned at online check-in (although if possible groups are sat together). You can still pay for reserved seating but the benefit is obviously a lot less now.

My anecdotal evidence is that this has massively quickened the boarding process. Before, there would be delays waiting for people to sort out their seating and luggage arrangements (families especially), now it is much less of an issue and turnaround times are quicker.

It's also possible that the massive increase in people taking only hand- luggage in recent years has been a factor, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER14> The various controlled studies I've seen, including the mythbusters report, all show unassigned seating to be fastest.

<comment><USER15> It's not clear from the link posted earlier[1] if mythbusters did a run of 10-100 seatings and calculated the average/median for each method - but it looks like they just did each once. If so I don't think a difference of +/-1 minute is significant. A difference of 100 in customer satisfaction probably is.

This is also culture dependent. Nobody boards planes like a group of Japanese. Be that salarymen or high-schoolers on a school trip.

The rest of the world _might_ board in more reasonable time if they got help to stand in line by their seat numbers (better yet, print seatnumber and an integer on the ticket - have people line up at the gate prior to boarding in accordance to the integer).

Would work except for the Scandinavians that'd consider themselves exempt... ;-)

[1] [http://mythbustersresults.com/airplane- boarding](http://mythbustersresults.com/airplane-boarding)

<comment><USER10> > have people line up at the gate prior to boarding in accordance to the > integer

Whenever I've had to queue way in advance of boarding in order just not to be at the end of my line, I've wished for this sort of solution—but, every time, it seems to me that you'd just run into the trouble where the lower-numbered folks wouldn't all show up on time, and then you'd have to (1) find a way to insert them into the line, which seems like it would have to slow them down, or (2) put them at the back of the line, in which case the whole point of the numbering scheme would be lost and we'd be right back to lines forming long before they need to do so.

<comment><USER15> If one had to print tickets, that might be a problem. But with cellphones, you could just have everyone et their seating at the gate. And "dynamically" move people that are late, out of the way.

So, lets say a plane seat 100, 75 show up on time - seat them automatically when the show up at the gate according to preferences. Those that remain, get what remains when they arrive. Want your seat? Want to sit with your group? Be at the gate 10 minutes before boarding (or however long it takes people to line up).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Being fast was good for the customer too. Being able to show up a few minutes before the plane was scheduled to depart, buy a ticket, walk out on the tarmac, board, and take off is a far cry from modern air travel.

The "bus" mentality, really worked in TX where the cities are close enough to have a lot of commerce/travel but far enough away that driving can take a considerable amount of time. Flight time between dallas->houston is an hour, driving is 3 hours. The problem is that with full planes, reliably buying a same day ticket is basically impossible. Add in parking/shuttles, security and and all the BS pushes the time in excess of 2 hours. Plus, its hard to guess at weather a few days out, so sometimes you know on the way to the airport that delays/etc are going to cause a flight to take longer than driving.

The 5 minute faster boarding time on SW is no longer a customer service advantage when the customer has been waiting over an hour to board.

<comment><USER17> Down here in Europe it is still okay to call a taxi 1.5 hours before takeoff, get to the airport, buy a ticket and fly. Is American security checks system so inefficient? In Europe it normally takes maybe 10 minutes if you go the normal line or max 2 minutes if you go choose 5-10 euro fast track, plus 2 minutes to buy that fast track on a separate counter, which a bit sucks.

<comment><USER18> I don't fly much, but I've never spent more than 10 minutes waiting to be screened, 5 actually being screened. But it's really highly variable, and the downside to missing a flight is very high, so most people show up really early regardless.

I gather it can be really bad at peak times.

<comment><USER19> The security lines here, except very early in the morning, are typically 40 minutes, minimum. It's atrocious.

The whole charade that taking off your shoes somehow makes people safer is insulting.

<comment><USER17> In Europe they ask you to take off shoes only if they are suspecting something. Like, for <5% of people. I had an unlucky pair of shoes with steel parts which always beeped on the screening machine, so they always asked to take them off, but in no other case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm so torn reading this. I do occasionally fly Southwest and I'm always impressed with how everyone working for Southwest seems just as focused on on time as I am. At the same time I think they started the "race to the bottom" that has made air travel such an increasingly unpleasant experience now in the US.

<comment><USER21> How exactly do you define race to the bottom? If on pricing alone, I can maybe see your argument. But Southwest has had a pretty consistently high level of service and low level of fees.

<comment><USER20> This emphasis on turning air travel into bus travel. How quickly can we turn a plane? How quickly can we board people? How many tickets can we _oversell_ hoping/expecting some people won't show leading to stressed staff and passengers getting bumped? How many flights a day can we push with no wiggle room so that a single storm in Chicago means your San Diego to Houston flight is 2 hours late. That whole mentality that it's ok to run the business that way.

<comment><USER21> I suppose there's some parallels to be drawn to software. I've often heard things like targeting 80% of memory / CPU / networking so that you have some slack for unexpected events. It seems like Southwest focuses on running as close to 100% asset utilization as possible. It's not necessarily optimal when there are issues, but I find it hard to fault them for what I consider to be a pretty legitimate business choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this one thing credited with saving the airline, or were there other efforts involved? I don't understand how a 10-minute turnaround time can turn an airline around so quickly.

<comment><USER23> Well it's pretty straightforward, if turnaround time is only 10 minutes and your competitors take an hour then you can simply make more flights per aircraft per day than them. This is amplified when your flights are short distance domestic. Depending on destination it probably allowed them to make 2 - 3 extra flights per aircraft per day, at a time when jet fuel was not so expensive. That could make a massive difference to profitability.

<comment><USER24> Hell, even in a day where jet fuel is very expensive, daily miles is still a key factor. Your margins might be smaller thanks to jet fuel, but more flights still means more revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like an easy idea to come up with, but more difficult to implement.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why isn't it possible to get in and out at 10 minutes? Is the modern airport a design failure?

<comment><USER27> Jetways. The article mentions boarding passengers while others are still leaving the plane. That's only possible on a 737 by using two doors, which is only practical if passengers walk out on the tarmac and board/disembark via sets of mobile stairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> NPR doesn't give much credit to the SW airlines ads of the 1970's.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7JApjgIGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7JApjgIGw)

</comment><comment><USER29> Its interesting how the 'reduce friction' mantra was basically as true in 1972 as it is today.

<comment><USER30> I'm sure if the Romans wrote business texts, it would be in there, too :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Now, do it in 9!

<comment><USER32> Tangential anecdote - In bootcamp, our drill instructors were famous for giving us a countdown and then counting us down along the lines of "You have 10 seconds, 10, 9, 7, 3, 2, 1, you're done!" In addition to skipping numbers, the "3, 2, 1" portion was said as quickly as they could manage. I think we only ever got about 50-75% of any supposed allotment of time. To this day, I still can't hear a countdown without wondering what numbers will be skipped, and of course, I expect "3, 2, 1" to only take up about a second and a half.</comment></comment>


Rob Pike: the origin of dotfiles - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/R58WgWwN9jp <comment><AUTHOR> Instead of putting a dotfile or dotdir in the user's home directory, do follow the XDG Base Directory specification: [http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir- spec-l...](http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec- latest.html) .

It's easy to understand and requires only a marginal increase in effort/code.

<comment><USER4> I see no benefit.

It's not at all easy to understand, nor easy to implement, nor does it have any tangible advantages.

It's one of these superfluous pseudo-standards that do nothing but add needless clutter. But gladly nobody seems to be using it anyway, I see only one directory in my ~/.local: vlc.

<comment><USER5> > I see no benefit.

The first benefit is that it removes clutters from your $HOME.

The second benefit is that you can now manage and backup your settings in a sane way.

* ~/.config contains config files (should not be lost, but if lost you can recreate them);

* ~/.local contains user data files (save them often, never lose them for they are not replaceable);

* ~/.cache contains cached information (can be tmpfs mounted, you can delete it any time you want, no loss in functionality, you just lose some optimization);

* ~/.run is for temporary system files (must be tmpfs mounted or it must be cleaned during at shutdown or power on).

Luckily most of the apps used on Linux systems now use it, you are probably using Mac OS X.

<comment><USER6> > The first benefit is that it removes clutters from your $HOME.

Invisible clutter? That's a strange concept.

But the rest of your point indeed makes sense. It still is easier and probably comment to backup the whole $HOME. But those points you can see as a benefit, though not obvious.

<comment><USER7> As Rob mentions in his post, the more dotfiles there are in $HOME the slower path resolution for any subfiles becomes. How do we navigate to ./src? We open the directory and read all the entries until we find the one called "src". What happens if we encounter a morass of dotfiles beforehand? src takes a while to find. The clutter may be invisible to _you_ , but it does gum up the works.

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, most modern file systems (JFS, XFS, ext4, reiserfs, btrfs, ...) have logarithmic (or better) directory lookup times. This is achieved using hashes and b-trees (or even hash tables).

<comment><USER7> Fair point. Though anything using the standard POSIX dirent API would still get the performance hit (even if path resolution doesn't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate having dotfiles in ~/ for the same reason why I hate "My Documents" in Windows: because it's supposed to be _my_ space that _I_ organize, not a generic dumping ground for your config files, brand-named folders, or other nonessential garbage.

I want my space to be _mine_. Keep your app's stuff out of there!

<comment><USER10> Where would you choose to put application config instead?

<comment><USER9> Literally anywhere but my personal space. Why not have /etc/<username>/? I could even live with a single ~/.config/ but very few apps use that.

<comment><USER4> It's actually quite useful to have everything that belongs to a user under _one_ directory.

The canonical example is the backup. There's a strong case to be made for "tar czf /tmp/backup.tgz ~". Do you really want your backups to become as complicated as they are on OSX and Windows?

Likewise, being able to mount home-directories from remote servers, and being able to _easily_ delete/move/quota users are highly desirable features in multi-user systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the case of hidden dot files is a good example of 'convention over configuration'[1].

Point is accepted, that it came into being due to a lazy programmer. But surely early people might have just liked the unintended consequence of some files (dot files) being hidden. Just like most of us, whenever we learnt unix thought that it is by design.

If early users, had found the consequence a handicap, it would have been fixed long back.

Its similar to the use of hash-tags on twitter or the @for addressing which got adopted by users first and so became features (although the paths to them being considered features are different).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_over_configuration>

Edit: Grammar

</comment><comment><USER12> The fact that "." and ".." were allocated actual directory entries and were returned when reading the directory, rather than just being handled by the kernel when parsing pathnames seems like the original sin of expediency here.

<comment><USER13> Why? Seems like a brilliantly simple quick solution that would be rather easy to roll back in the future and lacks any real downsides besides being a tad weird.

<comment><USER12> Because it was creating real directory entries that caused "." and ".." to be visible to userspace programs reading a directory, which then led to the hack in "ls" to hide them, which is where the article picks up.

It also isn't that easy to roll back once userspace programs start to rely on it - for example, the assumption that the number of files in a directory is equal to st_nlink - 2 is now so widespread that it's part of the UNIX API.

<comment><USER13> _shrug_ , it seems to have all worked out pretty well.

<comment><USER14> But all programs must make exceptions for these entries. Imagine trying to add a third magic filename, '...', for the grandparent for example. You would have a lot of coding to do. Not really possible. It would have been better to mark the dirs as special somehow rather than having each program have the convention programmed in.

<comment><USER12> ...and of course even the kernel had to have exceptions for them anyway - <USER2> knew they were special because it had to stop userspace from unlink()ing or rename()ing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He also writes why the dd command is so horrible: "dd is horrible on purpose. It's a joke about OS/360 JCL. But today it's an internationally standardized joke. I guess that says it all."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_Control_Language>

</comment><comment><USER16> dotfiles are not perfect, but to have this very negative vision on a feature that also helped is a bit a revisionist attempt IMHO.

Dotfiles provided a poor, but _at least simple_ way to store program-specific- user-specific configuration, since another standard was missing. After all it's a simple and decentralized system that worked very well with the concept of unix user and ACL: you write something inside your home directory, and this changes the behavior of your program.

Consider that this was invented many decades ago. Now it seems a lot better to have directories with sub directories. Maybe back then it was considered to be a waste of resources, inodes, and so forth.

We can improve it, create a new standard, and have something better than dot files, but dot files are better than many other over-engineered solutions that I can imagine coming out of some kind of design commission to substitute them.

Every time to passed your vim configuration to a friend you just copied a text file, sending it via email: you enjoyed one of the good points about dot files. Every time you did something like _cat dotfile | grep option_ you enjoyed the positive effects of single-file plaintext configuration.

Also it's worth saying that dot files are not just the concept of an hidden file with config inside. A lot of dot files also have a common simple format of multiple lines "<option> <value>", that's better than some XML or other hard to type format (IMHO JSON itself is not good for humans).

<comment><USER17> How does any of those advantages apply only to dotfiles and not just plain files?

<comment><USER18> I think there's an aspect of convenience, too. Personally, I prefer that to, say, configuration stored in some unspecified location in ~/Library/Application Support/Application/* (on OS X).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _For those who object that dot files serve a purpose, I don't dispute that but counter that it's the files that serve the purpose, not the convention for their names._

I would like to hear a good argument for why hidden files and folders are a good thing.

<comment><USER20> They are a natural segregator of novice and advanced users. If you have a limited level of interaction with the unix shell (remember than in the old days everyone in a science academic department used a Unix machine, even the dusty professors you kept in the back of the supplies cabinet), setting up their account and then making sure that they couldnt get into any trouble because they didn't know about 'ls -a' was very much a feature, trust me.

Moreover I personally much prefer them to global configuration directories because they are always local to the thing being configured and you can always override a global configuration by using them.

In fact I think they are a very elegant way to handle "hidden options" - <USER3> you want to expose to the power users but not bother newbies with.

tl;dr: I am not convinced they are a misfeature.

<comment><USER19> I wonder if that is a good solution for separating novices and pros though? For me, hidden files and folders only help to reinforce the confusion people have about computers. It's one thing to provide a folder to a user with a lock or shield on it, it's another to completely hide it from them.

<comment><USER21> Hiding is absolutely good design at every level. Not seeing UI controls, preferences, or _anything_ that is not relevant to the task at hand can make that task simpler, easier to understand, and more productive. If you need to see dotfiles, well, you might need to know about man pages or at least that commandline programs take flags. It's not like they're invisible.

There are plenty of examples: video games slowly reveal more skills as you learn and encounter progressively harder enemies. A good app should be usable at first launch (or only require minimal setup). Configuration and advanced features can come later.

Another great filesystem level example are OS X app bundles- an entire directory hierarchy appears as a single file/application. If you need to look inside (not likely), you have to know about right-click or the action widget, but for 99.9% of the time, you see only what you need. OS X and Windows also both completely hide "system" folders in Finder/Explorer as well.

Yes, hiding things can be confusing if it's not done right, but the alternative of showing everything always is definitely not the way to go.

<comment><USER22> What games reveal skills you have always had, as opposed to unlocking better powers? I would be really annoyed by players-guide-only abilities.

<comment><USER13> In the Quakes, various movement techniques are only available to those who know they exist. Worked very well I think, lend the games a much longer learning curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The main takeaway I think is that the reason we are doing things the way we do them is because that is how we have been doing them, not because of some kind of genius design. And actually the whole thing can start out as a mistake, and then later on basically becomes a religion. Its very funny actually.

<comment><USER24> Yes, very organic. The original programming shortcut accidentally created a sort of ecological niche, in which all sorts of things started to take root. Now, nobody can bulldoze the lot because there's too much stuff growing there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If not dot files lazy programmers would have just found another way. Just look at the results of lazy programmers on any Android SD card.

<comment><USER26> Is there a preferred standard for using the SD/external storage on Android?

<comment><USER25> [http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/t3x0p/randroid_lets...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/t3x0p/randroid_lets_start_project_clean_sd/c4jc41o)

> I do find it odd that so many apps have this problem. It's trivially easy to > get the proper location. Just call getExternalFilesDir() . Deletion at > uninstall happens automatically. In fact, it's the ONLY way to make sure > those files are deleted when you uninstall, because you can't run code at > uninstallation.

<comment><USER27> Probably because it came in fairly late (Froyo, I think).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The author's gripe seems to be that the hiding of dotfiles was unintended, ergo dotfiles are Bad. Whether they were intended is irrelevant; their wide usage vindicates the practice. After all, traction = value. The problem of program state/configuration/metadata storage is adequately met by dotfiles.

There are, no doubt, numerous unintended behaviors of programs. Most of these are simply ignored and certainly not leveraged the way the dot behavior is.

People don't go out of their way to abuse an unintended system behavior; they simply leverage all capabilities of a system ("intended" or not) to meet their needs. Had dotfiles not gained traction, some other solution would have been designed (or "engineered") to meet the needs of program state/configuration/metadata storage.

[Tangent: All of this reminds me of grammar freaks that harp on "correct" usage, completely oblivious to the fact that grammar changes, and "correct" is merely a lightweight pointer to the current norm.]

</comment><comment><USER29> I really like it that G+ is becoming a "lightweight blogging" platform. There are too many of these around, and folding them into a "social network" seems like a good idea. I wish they would add more features that would make this easier, though, since in general I think it's in everyone's interest and will pull more traffic to the site.

<comment><USER30> A bit off topic, but is it just me or is the quality of comments on public G+ posts is absolutely terrible? Within a few hours there has been more than 100 replies. Most are inane, rude, of the useless "great post!" type, or just plain old spam. I could only manage to glean about 8 or 9 insightful replies.

Is this something intrinsic to G+? Is it a function of the author's popularity? The discussions here are normally much more sensible, but I would expect HN's readership to have a fairly similar demographic to that of Rob Pike's G+ subscribers.

<comment><USER31> G+ is fair to middlin' at a bunch of stuff. Comments lack threading. There's poor noise control. Content filtering is limited to "+1" or "flag". There's no "-1" button (though various Chrome extensions have offered this at various points.

The main advantage is that it's a large community (10m+ users presently) initially seeded by Googlers (e.g.: tech-savvy people), and including a few notable luminaries such as Rob Pike. And if you've got the right circles, eventually good content finds its way into your stream. Sometimes (content discover/surfacing is something G+ does surprisingly poorly, and is an area at whch HN, Reddit, and StackExchange win hugely).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's really interesting. I always assumed hiding dotfiles was a deliberate convention, but to semi-quote one of the commenters, Rob's got a point. Or two.

<comment><USER33> Heh, I remember when I first found out about dotfiles. I thought it was a genius idea...

Little did I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If someone thinks hidden files are a misstep, then I don't want them designing a OS. Grandma really doesn't care about some conf file, or anything like that. She cares about the pictures of her grandkids.

The opinion that there shouldn't be hidden files comes from a perspective of someone who is a "power user" and who can't step back and see that most users really don't care for some .config file. To them it's clutter that gets in the way of finding what they really care about.

That said, dot files maybe the wrong way to do it. I like ~/Library in OSX. That's one good way.

Edit: Note that I'm talking about a general trend in the post's comments and on here. Not the author's opinion.

<comment> UK-AL Did you read his post? He said exactly that. Put them in a config directory of some sort.

<comment><USER34> Yes. I'm not talking about his post. I'm talking about a few other comments here and on G+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is a problem that libetc is supposed to help solve: <http://ordiluc.net/fs/libetc/>

<comment><USER36> It also begs the question, why it was named "etc" :)

<comment><USER37> I'm guessing it's because /etc contains configuration files and dot-files are just configuration files. Or do you mean, why was /etc named etc?

<comment><USER38> I think they meant the latter. Why is it /etc instead of, perhaps more obvious, /config or /settings?

<comment><USER36> If it was meant for configuration - probably it would've been - /cfg /ini /set /opt /flg /arg /prm (params)

As someone said - naming things is the hardest!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "How many bugs and wasted CPU cycles and instances of human frustration (not to mention bad design) have resulted from that one small shortcut about 40 years ago?"

Sigh, if only most of us had worked on a software system that has lasted as long as that.

</comment><comment><USER40> Tangent: I'm grumpy that Eclipse IDE uses the file names .project and .classpath. So they're hidden by default. Requiring special treatment.

Their content is XML. What's wrong with project.xml and classpath.xml?

</comment><comment><USER41> omg!

</comment><comment><USER42> Can't read without signing into Google…

oh well nothing of value was lost.

<comment><USER43> I'm with you.</comment></comment>


Should I go back to a Blackberry? - <AUTHOR> Lately I've been thinking about how much I miss the keyboard on my Blackberry Classic. There is something about tactile keyboards that capacitive glass doesn't measure up to. Call me mad, but I'm seriously giving thought about getting a Blackberry Classic.
I'm not really fond of iOS or Android, so not having access to the latest apps is nothing, as I don't use anything but the default apps anyway. I text like mad and do emails. That's about it. I cannot browse on mobiles, no matter how big/clear/fast the screen is. It just doesn't work for me, so losing a bit of screen space is no big deal either.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> No big deal, but you run the risk of turning into a dinosaur.

\--

Should I go back to my old PC AT running PC-DOS 3.3? There is something about those old clicky 84-key keyboards that the scissor switches in today's laptops don't measure up to. Call me mad, but I'm seriously giving thought about getting an IBM 5170 (6 MHz 80286, 11.5" monochrome CRT).

I'm not really fond of OS X or Windows, so not having access to the latest apps is nothing, as I don't use anything but TextEdit and Safari anyway. I word process like mad and visit BBSes. That's about it. I cannot get used to laptops, no matter how big/clear/fast the screen is. It just doesn't work for me, so losing a bit of power or screen space is no big deal either.

</comment><comment><USER2> In all seriousness, what are you going to do when you can't get another Blackberry Classic, or when the phones you've stockpiled no longer connect to upgraded cell towers?</comment>