It’s a fairly frequent experience for everyone to come across an existing application of an idea they’ve had on the backburner for a while. However, it’s pretty rare to find one done so thoroughly and well that it’s just completely unnecessary to go and do it yourself.

FlashcardExchange does a lot of cool stuff that I wanted to build myself in a flashcard application. Among them are shortcut keys for navigating through decks of cards quickly, special self-testing systems such as incorrectly-answered only and even the Leitner file technique, and most importantly, the ability to share and search through existing sets of cards.

Really, the only thing in my vision that isn’t present on this or the other flashcard sites is the strong subdivision of flashcard sets by college or school class. However, I can see how making the site appeal more to generic collections of knowledge is particularly helpful in making it useful to the general public. Kudos to Culley Harrelson and FlashcardExchange for a job well done!