I built a deck of more than 390 flashcards for full-stack .NET, React and Azure interviews. I expected it to teach me the material. It taught me more about how to learn.
One idea per card
My first cards were long. "Explain dependency injection in ASP.NET Core" was a paragraph on the front and a paragraph on the back, and I rated myself "good" if I remembered half of it. That is not a test; it is a hope.
Splitting it worked better:
- What problem does dependency injection solve?
- What is the difference between transient, scoped and singleton lifetimes?
- Which lifetime would you give a
DbContext, and why?
Each of those has an answer short enough to check honestly.
Write the answer in your own words
Copying a definition from the documentation makes a card that looks good and teaches nothing. When I rewrote answers in my own words, I found the places where I did not actually understand the topic. The card was a diagnosis before it was a revision aid.
Cards should be quick to review on a phone
Most reviews happen in short gaps: a queue, a commute, a break. So the cards had to be readable on a small screen, with short questions, clear formatting and no wall of text. Mobile-friendly design is a learning feature, because a card you can review in 20 seconds gets reviewed.
Turn mistakes into cards
Whenever I got a mock-interview answer wrong or hit a bug I did not expect, I wrote a card about it the same day. Those cards were the most valuable ones, because they covered exactly what I did not know yet, in the context where it mattered.
A deck is not understanding
Spaced repetition is excellent at keeping facts available. It does not teach you how to design an API, debug a slow query or decide between two architectures. For that, you have to build things and read other people's code. I use cards for the vocabulary and the "why", and projects for the judgment.
Make the habit smaller than your motivation
A daily review of a modest number of cards beats a heroic weekend session. The goal is to make the habit so small that it still happens on a bad day.
If you want the deck, it is free on GitHub, and the card-writing rules above are the real takeaway: short questions, your own words, and a card for every mistake.