flashy

flashy is a (terminal-based) flash card review program based on the method I've used for my first two years of University.

Usage

Starting

The program takes three types of arguments:

• Filenames to read questions from (can be multiple).
• Status filters (comma-separated and preceded by --status).
• --no-write-on-quit (it does what you think it does).

When using all markdown documents in a directory, I personally use fd (e.g, fd -e md -X flashy --status terrible,bad {}).

Navigating

Key	Action
j	Next card.
k	Previous card.
(space)	Switch between question and answer.
w	Write all cards to their respective files.
a	Change card status to "terrible".
s	Change card status to "bad".
d	Change card status to "fine".
f	Change card status to "good".

The card status (terrible/bad/fine/good) indicates how confident you are with the answer. I recommend the following system:

• terrible: drawing a total blank
• bad: unable to recall the correct answer
• fine: able to recall the correct answer after some thought
• good: able to recall the correct answer immediately

Don't forget to occasionally go through your "good" cards and demote them if necessary!

Question List Format

Question lists are a series of questions and answers. Questions are written as HTML comments (e.g., <!-- What's the square root of 169? -->) and function as separators between answers.

Card status is recorded after the question but within the comment (e.g., <!-- What's the square root of 169? FINE -->). Don't worry about adding these manually, as "terrible" is the default state and will be written upon pressing w.

See an example.

Installation

The program can be built with cargo build --release or nix build.