>An HN-reading tech nerd can probably figure it out, but your average Duolingomaxxing normie? No chance.

Me, the person who reversengineered obfuscated code doing weird crypto primitives and submitted patches to linux kernel can't figure it out either. Maybe I'm not HN nerd enough, so I had to do the duolingo to pass my citizenship exams.

Anki seems like it works for a lot of people with a very specific flow, but I don't know what the flow is and why it doesn't work for me. It's weird.

Reminds me of how I'm using Anki on iOS to learn German, and my phone's configured language is German, except for the Anki app, which is ironically the only app I've configured to be in English because I couldn't understand what 80% of the buttons meant.

Those reasons are why I love Anki. I'd rather have a program that exposes every mechanism of how it works and allows me to access it than a program that doesn't and the program appears to appear to work by magic. Give me visible cogs that I can tune and a good manual any day of the week.

Anki is refreshing function over form design. It's beautiful.

I think the default settings are fine for 99% of the users. I've used them to "master" a language and I've been more than fine. Actually, I'd argue I was more effective than people who didn't use SRS.

Sorry, but what's clunky about it? All buttons in reach of your thumb on the mobile app and usable keybindings on desktop?

Is there not enough useless whitespace around every button?