Is there any reason why these apps have to keep the database state locally? Why not just create a web service? The problem with this model would be keeping the server infrastructure running and getting some money to pay the bills, but it looks much simpler.
I also hate that the anki shared decks web site does not encourage collaboration, or at least not the decks I see in their web site. There are a lot of shitty, outdated decks and instead of collaborating to fix them people just upload their own shitty deck. Perhaps the people studying medicine who create decks on their own don't have this problem, but it is something I see in the web site. It would be great to have a site integrated with git so people can collaborate on github.
Also, classification of decks by language is something I miss. When you search for a language, eg. Russian, you get decks for English->Russian, but also for Russian->English. It's hard to find the deck I want
(Just some suggestions, in case someone of working on anki clones)
> I also hate that the anki shared decks web site does not encourage collaboration...
Dude, I'm building exactly this. I'm not basing it on git for various reasons, but I am using event sourcing, and git is basically event sourcing for code. My system will (eventually) allow pull requests, comments, upvotes/downvotes, and all kinds of community shenanigans on flash cards. It's months away from release... but here's the repo if you wanna have a look: https://github.com/dharmaturtle/cardoverflow
> Is there any reason why these apps have to keep the database state locally? Why not just create a web service? The problem with this model would be keeping the server infrastructure running and getting some money to pay the bills, but it looks much simpler.
The idea of not having my personal decks stored on my own disk(s) is honestly much worse than the annoyance of sometimes (rarely) running into issues syncing. I've been working on various decks for literally years and have several thousands of cards made. Server-side stored only? Please no.
You can use Anki in your web browser without storing anything locally. It has some limitations and is not really meant to be your sole use of Anki but you can create and study text based cards.
In many cases, yes. But additionally, even with mostly reliable reception people don't want to have to depend on that reception. It's poor form and poor design to include an intermittent service (even if largely reliable for a large portion of your users) as a mandatory component when it is technically unnecessary.
Offline first is simply a more reliable way to build systems than online-only. Specifics long forgotten, but a few years ago (perhaps 10+ now) a lot of people got, understandably, upset when they found out their single player games couldn't be played without an internet connection in order to authenticate. Oops, auth server went down, players can't play the thing they dropped $50+ on.
I also hate that the anki shared decks web site does not encourage collaboration, or at least not the decks I see in their web site. There are a lot of shitty, outdated decks and instead of collaborating to fix them people just upload their own shitty deck. Perhaps the people studying medicine who create decks on their own don't have this problem, but it is something I see in the web site. It would be great to have a site integrated with git so people can collaborate on github.
Also, classification of decks by language is something I miss. When you search for a language, eg. Russian, you get decks for English->Russian, but also for Russian->English. It's hard to find the deck I want
(Just some suggestions, in case someone of working on anki clones)