relevant Twitter thread about spaced repetition: https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/95776322945477427...
However, the transfer can be wildly better than trying to swallow a big pile of Facts (TM) solely by using them. Despite being superficially more work, Anki-memorizing+using can get you to mastery on topics with much less net time spent than simply straight-up using, as long as it is a task that involves a lot of "brute facts" of some sort.
This misconception wrecked my first couple of attempts to get into it, because I did not get the results I thought I should get. Better understanding has yielded better results.
An interesting thought would be to have some interactive anki cards.
I don't know about the details, but it could be something like, don't show me a card "how to list files using bash", show a command prompt, and if the user types a command that list files (tree, ls, find, etc.) approve the answer. Maybe ask "list files as many ways you can remember), etc.
How would this translate to other kinds of knowledge? Probably not easy, but not every card would have to be interactive, just the ones that make sense.
I want to use Anki so badly. I have bought the app on iOS ($25), but I haven't been able to get it to stick. I think the hardest part is to distill things into brute facts.
It seems like most the facts are trivial and obvious if you know the concepts and I haven't been able to map my concepts to something on an Anki card that would be useful for spaced repetition. IMO concepts are not something that you "forget" once you have done all the work of putting the pieces together in your head.
I would love to hear success stories of people using spaced repetition successfully for things that aren't facts.
I've only used spaced repetition for learning languages myself (vocabulary but also conjugations and declensions when applicable) and it's true that it generally works better when you can easily match something 1:1 to make both sides of the card. When you can't easily reduce something to a very simple and understandable expression it can get quite abstract and difficult to use.
For instance if you're making a deck to learn French you could make a card that says "une chaise -> a chair", no problem here. But now if you want to translate the word "encore" you have a problem because it can mean a bunch of different things in English: still, yet, even, again... Here making a card can create more confusion than nothing in my experience. It might be better to include it in short sentences demonstrating one specific meaning at a time, like "il est encore en retard" -> "he's late again".
Same thing for grammar: "je pense" -> "I think". Easy. "tu pensais" -> "you (sing. inf.) thought (imperfect)". Not so easy. For these things spaced repetition can only get you so far, you really need to practice the language "in context" to make it stick.