Nearly every book I’ve read on teaching and education over the past decade has talked about the value of spaced repetition. For much of that time, spaced repetition has been something I would recommend learners do, but it wasn’t something I helped anyone do… until now.
Python Morsels now has Daily Recall: a spaced repetition system for Python programmers.
We learn by recalling, not by reading
The most effective learning techniques all rely on active recall: trying to remember something without looking it up, whether with flash cards, by explaining an idea in your own words, or by doing a task that requires it.
We don’t learn by putting information into our heads. We learn by retrieving information from our heads. That’s why Python Morsels has always been built around exercises rather than videos: writing code is the most useful form of recall for a Python programmer.
But not everything worth remembering warrants an entire Python exercise.
- Which
uvcommand runs a tool without installing it? - What is the time complexity of various list operations?
- Which string method can remove a substring from the end of a string?
A 20-minute exercise is overkill for practicing something that small. But practicing it just once isn’t enough either. A quick question, asked again just before you’d forget, is a much better fit.
Spaced repetition beats the forgetting curve
Many of the things I learned in school are long gone, especially the ones I haven’t thought about even once in years. I think I could explain photosynthesis in 9th grade. I can’t today.
This is explained by the forgetting curve: we forget what we don’t recall, and the rate of forgetting is somewhat predictable. Spaced repetition is about using active recall to beat the forgetting curve. Instead of recalling an idea over and over right after learning it, you wait until it has started to fade, and then try to recall it. Each successful recall earns a longer wait before the next one: minutes at first, then hours, then days, and eventually weeks and months.
The tricky part is the timing: when should you try to recall each thing? That’s where an algorithm helps. A spaced repetition system tracks every idea you’re trying to remember and prompts you to recall each one right before you’d forget it.
What Daily Recall does
Back in April, just before Earth Day, I made Whereabouts.Earth to help me learn the name and location of every country in the world. When I started, I could name about 90 of the 197 countries on a map. By mid-June, with about 10 minutes of practice a day, I knew all of them.
Daily Recall is the same idea, but for Python. You pick the packs you want to practice, and each day it asks you a few questions from them. Answer a question correctly and it’ll be a while before you see that one again. Miss it and you’ll see it again soon.
Daily Recall uses FSRS for scheduling, which is one of the most effective spaced repetition algorithms (it’s an option in the Anki flash card app).
If you have trouble remembering which operations on different data structures are fast and which are slow, there’s a Time Complexity pack for that.
If you’re struggling to remember the many different subcommands that uv supports, there’s a uv pack for that.
There are also packs on string methods, built-in functions, dictionaries, iterable unpacking, f-strings, pytest, and what’s new in Python 3.13 and 3.14.
I’m hoping to release about one new pack each week over the next many months.
Daily Recall also works well on a phone because recall questions don’t require typing a bunch of code. So you can replace 5 minutes of your daily doomscrolling with 5 minutes of extra Python learning.
Early users who practiced about 5 minutes a day ended their first month with 25 to 50 new things they could still recall weeks after last seeing them.
You can use Daily Recall for free
Most Daily Recall packs are free, and the rest are included with the All Access plan. To get started, create a free Python Morsels account, pick a pack or two, and answer a few questions.
And whether or not you ever use Daily Recall, I’d recommend spaced repetition. If you’d rather write your own flash cards, on Python or anything else, Anki works well too. The next time you learn something new in Python, don’t just read it a second time. Try to recall it tomorrow, and then again next week.
