Flashcard-based active recall works way better than I expected for learning DSA

I've been experimenting with spaced repetition for technical stuff and wanted to share what I found. What works: Frame it as a question, not a fact. "How does Netflix distribute requests across 1000 servers?" forces you to think. "Round Robin is a load balancing algorithm" doesn't. One concept per card. Not "explain hash tables" but "why does HashMap use 0.75 as the load factor?" Code on cards. Even 5-8 lines of pseudocode anchors the concept better than a paragraph. 10 min/day beats 2 hours on the weekend.