
To Remember Everything You Learn, Surrender to This Algorithm (2008) - colinprince
https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/
======
Mbioguy
Few people have tried Anki (a free alternative to SuperMemo). Even fewer have
tried its add-ons, which is where it truly shines! Vanilla Anki is mostly good
for text flashcarding, with the phone app helpful for making use of those
little bits of downtime throughout the day.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-4xOe79epU&list=PL3MozITKTz...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-4xOe79epU&list=PL3MozITKTz5YFHDGB19ypxcYfJ1ITk_6o)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzBoDe3PgAc&list=PL3MozITKTz...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzBoDe3PgAc&list=PL3MozITKTz5Y9owI163AJMYqKwhFrTKcT)

Glutanimate has taken Anki to a whole new level. He created a painless UI for
occluding any part of an image and making Anki flashcards out of it (Image
Occlusion Enhanced). I used it to efficiently create and memorize thousands of
anatomy flashcards. Ordered lists can be a real pain to memorize, but when not
missing steps is crucial (as it is for medical OSCEs), Cloze Overlapper has
worked very well.

Anki lets you share your decks with others, and medical students have
collaboratively created very high quality study decks for studying for the
various STEP exams.

To be honest, I was always a fairly mediocre student. Big-picture concepts and
figuring things out on the fly, no prob. But I've always struggled to nail
down bits of information long-term or learn sequential information, meaning
calc and ochem required inordinate amounts of time. No longer the case. Spaced
repetition plus visual/text/auditory learning is a recipe for success.

The possibilities here should not be underestimated. Folks on Hacker News have
talked about the value of information commons, and this right here is the next
best example behind Wikipedia I have ever encountered. While quality
collaborative decks exist for things like medical school, learning languages,
and more, none exist specifically for the program I am in (PA school). I am
currently creating my own with the goal of it being the core of a quality
collaborative deck. I am using Gephi to spatially organize concept maps for
diagnoses complete with incidence and strength of associations, when such
information is available. I then export these maps to Anki, use Visual
Occlusion Enhanced to block out the information I want to recall, and voila:
time-efficient first-time learning and long-term retention.

~~~
yellowcherry
I'm using DroidAnki on my phone as part of my efforts to learn Mandarin. It
took a bit of time to figure out how best to configure it, but now that I have
it tuned to my liking, it's a great tool. It's not the only tool I've been
using, but it's one of the most helpful.

~~~
idoescompooters
Yeah I've got the iPhone version of the Anki app. There's a good Mandarin deck
called Spoonfed that gives you sentences instead of just words. Much better.
But, by far the most effective way to learn the language is to practice with
natives. Which I have been doing for a few weeks and the results are amazing.

~~~
Splendor
Can you link to the iOS app? I see several in the App Store and I'm not sure
which one to try.

~~~
yorwba
Download links for all versions of Anki can be found on
[https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) (And yes, Anki for iOS
costs money.)

~~~
Splendor
Thanks!

------
btrettel
I used Anki (similar to SuperMemo) to study for my PhD qualifiers and it
definitely helped. I kept up the cards for a while after that, adding more and
more. I'm convinced I would have not passed the measure theoretic probability
theory class I took without spaced repetition software. The software also
proved very useful when I would have a technical idea and had no reference on
me as I could remember the details of many results. It seemed to accelerate my
thoughts in a way too by removing the delay to look up some information.

Eventually, I did not have the time or need to keep reviewing the cards, so I
stopped. But I intend to pick it up again after cleaning up the cards after my
PhD. I highly recommend the software.

One piece of advice: I treat these flash cards as basically fast tests that
trigger a review if you fail. I recommend this approach as many people seem to
think flash cards can only be definitions. Some of my cards are definitions,
some are short problems, some are proofs, etc. The definitions are unit tests.
Problems and proofs are integration tests. Both are necessary.

~~~
xamuel
I credit Anki with allowing me to successfully leap from ivory-tower academic
to professional software engineer. I recognized right away that most academics
would scoff at lowly "plebian" tasks like "actually learning the details of a
programming language". So I forced myself to push through that prideful
bottleneck and essentially memorized several programming manuals cover-to-
cover using Anki.

~~~
bpizzi
Well, IMHO (no offense meant), memorizing programming manuals makes one a good
lonely programmer.

To become a 'professional software engineer', one must learn to be a team-
player within a group of persons tasked in building and maintaining a piece of
software that will stand the test of time. Which requires a very different
skill set. One can be a good SE and still be relying on auto-completion and
inline help in one's favorite text editor.

Remembering the API of your languages definitely helps, but actually building
softwares that will be used by real users, for years, that's what makes you a
'professional software engineer'.

~~~
xamuel
Sure, but teamwork isn't everything. Or studios would hire cheap
communications grads and there'd be no need for CS programs.

------
Arun2009
> "To this day," Bjork says, "most people think about forgetting as decay,
> that memories are like footprints in the sand that gradually fade away. But
> that has been disproved by a lot of research. The memory appears to be gone
> because you can't recall it, but we can prove that it's still there. For
> instance, you can still recognize a 'forgotten' item in a group. Yes,
> without continued use, things become inaccessible. But they are not gone."

This was quite eye opening to me when I first heard of it. Apparently, our
long term memory is virtually limitless. You never truly lose something you
once had learned well.

Another fact about memory that I found equally interesting: memory is not a
"thing" but a process. When you recall something, you are actually
reconstructing the memory from various factors associated with it, pretty much
like how a paleontologist might reconstruct the image of a dinosaur from
fossil remains.

~~~
colordrops
It seems to me that there are two gates, and they move with age, and the rate
at which they move differs from person to person. The first gate is the time
until losing something from associative memory. The second gate is losing the
memory completely. Yes, this does happen, and it happens to everyone. But the
quote still has some validity in that many things we think we forgot are still
buried deep inside.

------
roi
The best and most practical introduction to spaced repetition is Michael
Nielsen's _Augmenting Long-term Memory_
([http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html](http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)),
already discussed in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17460513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17460513).

------
jjcc
It's quite interesting that Anki(It's a Japanese 暗记 for those who don't know
where the name comes from) is mentioned a few times but no body mention
"Memory palace"[1] and "Major system"[2] yet. Both methods try to hack some
features/bugs of our brains built by mother nature during million years of her
evolutionary development. Most memory athletes use some variation of these
methods to achieve astonishing performance. There's a Dr. Yep can remember a
65 thousands of English word and the locations (i.e. page number and the
sequence on that page) of each word on a Chinese/English dictionary.

The trick is investing some time to build a personalized memory system, then
use the system to remember other things like passport number, credit card ,
phones etc. It might not be attractive to most people because today we have
smart phone to help us. But for learning new knowledge, combination of both
space repetition and memory system is quite interesting. Here's what I did: I
use a Anki alternative called Memrise[3] to build a Major system. (I also have
Anki installed but just prefer Memrise). Then I use Major system to review the
concepts I've learned. Major system here is the equivalent of Anki as a tool
for short term place holder of space repetition, not directly used for
learning. I found brain Anki is better than smartphone Anki/Memrise although I
built former Anki with later Anki.

Come on fellow hackers, hacking your brain is very rewarding

[1][https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Method_of_Loci](https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Method_of_Loci)

[2][https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Major_System](https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Major_System)

[3][https://www.memrise.com/en/](https://www.memrise.com/en/)

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
[https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Person-Action-
Object_(PAO)_Syst...](https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Person-Action-
Object_\(PAO\)_System)

I considered working on this, but I'm just not excited enough about
remembering. Thanks google. Oh and Einstein said (according to Shaq) you
should never remember what you can go lookup.

~~~
michaelcampbell
The beauty of the human memory system is not whether or not you can remember a
thing, but the correlations and relationships between them. A convenient
lookup mechanism doesn't help there.

------
Terretta
For language learning, consider Pimsleur, who discovered ‘the algo’
previously:

 _“Graduated Interval Recall - Dr. Pimsleur’s research on memory was perhaps
one of his most revolutionary achievements. He discovered that if learners
were reminded of new words at gradually increasing intervals, each time they
would remember longer than the time before. He documented the optimal spacing
for information to move from short-term into long-term, or permanent, memory.
This theory is at the base of all the Pimsleur programs.”_

[https://www.pimsleur.com/the-pimsleur-method](https://www.pimsleur.com/the-
pimsleur-method)

~~~
idoescompooters
I'm a big fan of the Living Language package.

------
1024core
> _how to become a genius: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through
> spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse
> interruption, and never resist sleep when tired._

~~~
cJ0th
Maybe it's just me who after years at uni is sick of viewing everything from
this impoverished academic point of view but I think these statements are not
helpful at all. People worship advice/knowledge these days and totally forget
about the doing.

The statement does not deny that actually doing stuff is important - "work
steadily". However, these are just empty words to someone who tries to become
a genius by hitting the books first.

My advice (yes, I do see the irony here) in this age would be to postpone
seeking advice or reading about a topic as long as possible. As a result, your
common sense sharpens and you may even come up with fresh, creative ideas that
others perhaps didn't have.

~~~
rimliu

      > postpone seeking advice or reading about
      > a topic as long as possible
    

Oh gosh, the number of inefficient solutions, horrible architectures, brain-
dead encryption systems I saw, because of the people who did not bother to
open a book.

To come up with creative solutions you need to have a base for said
creativity. I.e. to connect the dots in original way you need to have the dots
already.

I have nor proof, but I suspect that the number of useful solutions created by
people who know nothing about the field is close to zero.

Somehow I doubt one would see much further when instead of climbing onto the
shoulders of giants they prefer to stay in the pit of their own ignorance.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> Oh gosh, the number of inefficient solutions, horrible architectures, brain-
> dead encryption systems I saw, because of the people who did not bother to
> open a book.

If you hadn't come across horrible architectures you would have learned less
about good ones. It would be nice if this all happened inside of one person,
that's what the parent is suggesting.

------
thestephen
This type of learning, combined with applying the knowledge learned, is easily
one of the biggest lifehacks I've encountered.

Growing up, I (falsely) internalized that I somehow had a hard time learning
languages. However, with the help of Anki, that has an algorithm based on
SuperMemo, I realized that this wasn't the case - just that the traditional
textbook methods weren't for me when it comes to cramming in "arbitrary"
information.

While living in Japan, I used Anki to supplement my recognition of kanji. I
averaged roughly 7 minutes of studies for a year, internalizing the meanings
and readings of roughly 1000 characters with a 95% retention rate.

Judging from my peers, the only ones that managed to pick up this volume were
those that studied the language full-time. Of course, they learned the
language overall at a much higher level than I did - this methodology purely
focused on the recognition aspect.

Naturally, I got to put the characters to use living in the country, and I
also spent time making up mnemonics for each character. Your mileage may vary.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm curious what your mnemonics are like, could you give an example or two?

I'm not a student of Japanese, but AIUI there are pictographs and ideographs
amongst the characters, presumably these are effectively already mnemonics?

~~~
yorwba
That might have been true of the original bone script characters, but over the
millennia they have been stylized beyond recognition, and many new characters
were created. Modern Japanese or Chinese is about as mnemonic as the typical
icon set used in a GUI application.

However, most characters are composed of a few common components, called
radicals, which can sometimes provide hints about the meaning. For example,
the Chinese words 海 "sea", 波浪 "wave" and 渴 "thirsty" all contain the water
radical ⺡. Similarly for 丝绸 "silk" and 缠绕 "wind around", which contain the
thread radical ⺓.

Personally, I don't use any mnemonics, but I know someone who does, and he'd
assigned each radical a memorable representation (e.g. the thread corresponds
to Spiderman) and then he had a story linking a word to the components, so
that 丝绸 would be about two Spidermen, one of which wraps himself in silk to
use it as a ghost costume.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Cool, thanks for the lesson and info.

------
growlist
I use Anki. It really does work. A few things I found:

1\. It takes discipline to understand the material properly before attempting
to just bang it all in Anki, but learning directly from Anki can be miserable,
so it really is best to try to grasp it fully before going near Anki

2\. Creating the right questions can be difficult - sometimes I found myself
able to regurgitate the answer but other tests proved I didn't really
understand the meaning. One way to approach this is to test different aspects
of the answer, or to add the inverse of the question. Still even if you don't
grasp the meaning properly just having a rote answer in your head can improve
your capability

3\. Life often gets in the way of the discipline required!

------
femto
It would make sense if you could get electronic textbooks which are already in
the question/answer form required by spaced repetition software, ready to
"load and learn". Rather than reading a traditional textbook, you would take
an equivalent question/answer set and learn it by spaced repetition. Do such
things exist?

Following on from that, maybe such question answer sets could be automatically
generated from the semantic web? A simple example would be a question/answer
set about capital cities, but could one pick an arbitrary subject and
manufacture a list of questions about it?

~~~
ai_ia
> It would make sense if you could get electronic textbooks which are already
> in the question/answer form required by spaced repetition software, ready to
> "load and learn". Rather than reading a traditional textbook, you would take
> an equivalent question/answer set and learn it by spaced repetition. Do such
> things exist?

I am working to solve exactly this. A form of learning where the learning
happens due to interaction between a bot and a human. Machine teaching humans
basically. Been working for over 20 months. Will be releasing within two
weeks. :)

~~~
afro88
I would like to know more about this. Do you have a mailing list I can add
myself to for a notification when you release?

~~~
ai_ia
Thanks. You can sign up at this mailing list:
[https://tinyletter.com/primerlabs/](https://tinyletter.com/primerlabs/) here.
I created it just now.

------
xkfm
This is by far my favorite piece of software I've ever purchased (and one
that's keeping me on Windows). It's very obtuse to use and not really user
friendly at all unless you're just making flashcards with it. I get the
impression that it's somewhat dogfooding taken to the extreme, and it's almost
as if they're selling it as a side project.

There are so many random features like the sleep tracker
([https://www.supermemo.com/help/sleep.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/help/sleep.htm))
that don't really make much sense to have but are there anyway.

There's also a web version if you just want flashcards that's mainly focused
on language learning. They sell some courses and you can add your own cards
too.

The biggest selling point for me is the incremental reading
([https://www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm))
feature. It's the only way I can manage to keep track of so many articles that
I find interesting, and is vastly superior to leaving hundreds of tabs open or
a bunch of bookmarks I'll never look at. It's superior to
instapaper,readitlater etc because I don't have to decide what to read when I
open the app, and I don't have to worry about forgetting about the article if
I stop in the middle of it.

If I see anything remotely interesting, I just chuck it in Supermemo, and I'll
see it eventually. If it's really important, I'll set its priority higher so I
see the article sooner.

If I'm doing research on something and have 15 tabs open, all 15 tabs go into
Supermemo, and will eventually get whittled down into flashcards. Start with
an article -> extracts -> smaller extracts -> cloze deleted flashcard.

Long comment chains on Hacker News? Supermemo. Youtube videos? Supermemo.
Email? Supermemo. Images? Supermemo.

I check my RSS feeds once or twice a week, grab all the interesting articles,
import into supermemo, and I'm done.

Supermemo for me replaces: Evernote/OneNote, most bookmarks, Anki, and various
todo list apps.

If I just wanted to make flashcards from set material, I'd honestly use Anki,
because of the mobile apps. It's really easy to do a few repetitions when you
have downtime through the day.

Every person I've shown this app too doesn't really care about it, and I don't
really know why. If I had to guess, it's probably because the UI is horrific.
I can effortlessly keep up with so much information, and it takes an hour or
two out of my day.

~~~
ReverseCold
So for memorizing "stuff" \- does this provide anything over Anki? It looks
like Anki does the same thing.

~~~
xkfm
No not really, the algo might be slightly "better". But if you only want
flashcards, go with Anki. I'd also recommend you make them yourself.

------
rdfi
I've been doing spaced repetition with Anki since 2013. I wrote about my
experience here: [https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2016/05/04/hack-your-brain-
lea...](https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2016/05/04/hack-your-brain-learn-faster-
better/)

If I could only give one advice to someone about improving their learning
skills, it would be to learn about spaced repetition

------
hoodwink
It took me several attempts to ascend the learning curve of Anki, but once I
did, it changed my life. Anki Essentials by Alex Vermeer [0] was the
introduction that got me over the hump.

Now I use Anki almost daily for learning programming, math, vocabulary, and
retaining books I've read.

On books, I originally wrote a script that scraped the Kindle highlights page
and converted them into a file that could be imported into Anki. I'd Cloze
delete passages and review maybe 20 a day. That practice was so beneficial
that I've since started developing it into a standalone product called
Readwise. [1]

Readwise doesn't yet incorporate hardcore spaced repetition and active recall
principles, but it will soon.

[0] [https://alexvermeer.com/anki-essentials/](https://alexvermeer.com/anki-
essentials/) [1] [https://readwise.io](https://readwise.io)

~~~
j_chodorowicz
Thats awesome! Have you considered Diigo integration?

------
eadmund
As soon as I read this, I wondered if someone had written some elisp to do it.
Sure enough, org-drill[0] exists and implements spaced-repetition learning. In
true emacs fashion, it actually implements three different algorithms which
one can choose from!

Just looking at it briefly, it appears to be pretty nice.

0: [https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-
drill.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html)

~~~
gnomewascool
While I'm a pretty great emacs fanatic myself, I think that this is one of the
few cases where you'd be doing yourself a disservice by using the emacs
alternative. Anki is extremely keyboard-friendly (more so than anything bar
Emacs and vim), pretty extensible in a decent language (python), and unlike
Emacs in this case, has a huge ecosystem behind it. The only thing missing is
the possibility of using Emacs keybindings in text input fields (which is Qt's
fault) — if that's important for you, you can use Emacs for input into Anki —
google for it, as they're seem to be several options...

FWIW I read somewhere that Anki started off as an Emacs mode, initially,
though the only source I could find now (quickly), is this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10925971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10925971)

Edit:

The Web archive helps (as always):

[http://web.archive.org/web/20091001153225/http://ichi2.net:8...](http://web.archive.org/web/20091001153225/http://ichi2.net:80/flashcard/)

------
neuralk
Spaced repetition software? A requisite post is gwern's excellent and
comprehensive article on them [https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-
repetition](https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition)

------
wb36
Memrise.com (primarily for learning the vocabulary of another language)
combines spaced repetition with mnemonics. When learning a particular piece of
vocabulary it will offer up an ordered list of suggested mnemonics based on
their popularity in other sets. Extremely effective for its use case.

------
AJRF
TL;DR: The "algorithm" is spaced repetition. God this was a frustrating
article to read.

Spaced repetition does work though, I used a tool called Anki which has a free
online sync service and free apps for every platform (bar iOS, it costs £15 on
that platform).

~~~
e19293001
From Anki manual[0]:

Internally, Anki’s spaced repetition system is based on an older version of
the SuperMemo algorithm called SM2

[0] -
[https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html](https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html)

------
e19293001
I just found out that you can use SuperMemo without a computer.

[https://www.supermemo.com/articles/paper.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/articles/paper.htm)

I thought it would be interesting for me to do this method while I'm studying
a scientific paper. Any thoughts?

~~~
pavelpokorny
I've used the paper method in the beginnings of my English study and it worked
well for me. SuperMemo was a really great tool and I liked it very much.
Managed to keep using it for maybe 10 years, and I'm still sorry that I've
stopped when the program and its community were in decline. But the method and
algorithm remain the best and it's great to see it's used in modern
applications - not just Anki but perhaps in all major language teaching apps.
The fact that this article made it to HN front page speaks for itself.

As for using it for scientific paper study - depends what you expect from it.
Spaced repetition is great for remembering and retention of facts. When I'm
reading a scientifi paper, I rather struggle with the basic understanding of
it :)

~~~
andai
Ahh, but if you could better remember everything you have understood, surely
that would help with understanding the next paper!

------
khazhoux
Is there a version of this or some alternative for learning+remembering music?

I learn a piano piece, memorize and internalize it, but then if I stop playing
it for a few weeks, it completely vanishes from my head. Super frustrating,
it's like starting over every time.

On the other hand, I have very good auditory memory -- I can "hear" and recall
music in my head without problems. But that's unhelpful to me when I try to
_play_ music.

~~~
mtwshngtn
Play very slowly through the piece at least a couple times every time you
practice. So slowly that it's hard to discern what piece is being played.

Repeat the same process when you have your piece memorized. Then play your
piece from memory but hands alone. You will build up the muscle memory
required to keep the piece in your fingers, rather than your head.

~~~
khazhoux
No, I did that already. I practice slow and methodically. I keep a measure-by-
measure logbook of progress. Muscle memory established. I can then play
expressively from memory.

But eventually I'll move on to the next piece, and wind up forgetting to re-
visit the other one for a few weeks or months. Gone!!

~~~
chillacy
> and wind up forgetting to re-visit the other one for a few weeks or months

Maybe adapt your practice to the forgetting curve, revisit a piece the next
day, then in 3 days, then in 7 days, then in 2 weeks, then 1 month, then 3
months, etc. If ever you mess up the piece, then it's back to 1 day.

~~~
khazhoux
This makes sense. Thanks!

------
random_kris
been researching spaced repetition and anki/sm and other stuff... I decided to
try it because my memmory is quite bad when learning new stuff. I am also a
daily weed smoker so my short-term memmory is quite bad but since positives
outweigh the negative sides I don't plan on stopping. What do you guys think
am I in big disadvantage?

------
jammygit
I used to use supermemo a lot but when I found out I couldn't export my cards
(at the time anyway) I got nervous and switched to Anki

Does anybody know if the original creator is still in charge? Supermemo.com
got reworked really heavily a couple of years ago and I wondered if he may
have sold his company, or maybe just hired a team to make some apps

------
brucardoso
Piotr Wozniak just posted a new article about SRS
[https://www.supermemo.com/pl/articles/history](https://www.supermemo.com/pl/articles/history)
(June, 2018)

------
Waterluvian
I heard a doctor online once say, "watch one, do one, teach one." He was
talking about medical procedures but I've focused on the "teach one" part to
much success in software.

------
known
Feynman technique [https://qz.com/849256/how-to-master-a-new-
subject/](https://qz.com/849256/how-to-master-a-new-subject/)

------
asdfman123
So can anyone summarize the memorization algorithm for me? I don't have time
right now to read through the full article.

How often should repetitions be spaced, roughly speaking? Is there a rule of
thumb?

~~~
savanaly
This is one flavor of these types of algorithms that you can viably implement
yourself:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system)

~~~
asdfman123
That's funny. I developed a crude version of that algorithm by separating my
flash cards into easy, medium, and hard stacks. I spent most time on the hard
stack and would downgrade the difficulty of cards after I increasingly
mastered them.

Nothing groundbreaking. I'm sure other people have done the same things out of
sheer efficiency - no need to keep going over the easy cards.

------
zhdc1
Obligatory shout out to Learn with Texts -
[http://lwt.sourceforge.net/](http://lwt.sourceforge.net/) \- which interfaces
with Anki.

------
praptak
The TLDR: the algorithm is spaced repetition. Notable apps that implement it
are SuperMemo (this one got it popular) and Anki (the free one).

~~~
megous
Next article will be 6000 words about how moderate exercise improves general
well being.

------
subsubsub
> "To Remember Everything You Learn, Surrender to This Algorithm"

> "The winter sun sets in mid-afternoon in Kolobrzeg, Poland, but the early
> twilight does not deter people from taking their regular outdoor promenade"

I find titles promising a specific piece of useful information combined with
longform, author storyline based content to be one of the most fustrating
things about reading traditional journalism on the internet. A form of bait
and switch.

~~~
bufferoverflow
My writing teacher called it "verbal diarrhea".

Journalism students spend so much of their time doing pointless writing
exercises, they feel like they should continue with it, as if their reputation
depends on it.

In the modern world the opposite is true - attention spans are short, you must
get to the point.

A similar thing is true in video - I can't stand vloggers who dance around or
have to explain the whole history of the subject before getting to the point.

I blame Google - they incentivise long articles with lots of keywords and
longer videos.

~~~
snowwrestler
Long form content actually does very well online when it is an interesting
subject and well-written (and, increasingly, creatively designed).

For example: this article has been voted to the front page of HN, which is
more than thousands of terse, AP-style inverted-pyramid news articles can say.

