How bad would it be for anki to allow cards due value go negative numbers?

Problem of shifting values is you have to force a full sync every time you do it

Examples where it would be useful:

Is one of those things that shouldnt be too bad, but i dont know anki internals so…

Thanks!

Shifting does not force a full sync, but it needs to sync any cards you shift. If your goal is to see new cards in LIFO order, you can enable the v3 scheduler and set the sort order to descending position.

I dont want to see new cards in LIFO. I only add a few cards at the beginning

The way it works is, i can learn 15 new easy cards per day, but only 1-2 hard ones. I add the easy ones at the front and the hard ones to the end of the pile. If the easy cards are not presented the next day, when i was exposed to them, they might turn difficult. Or at least more difficult, depending on the card. I add context to the cards, but is not as powerful as using my short term memory to ingrain them

I know it only sync those cards that are shifted, but in my experience, when you shift the first one, you shift everything else and so you have a full sync

Going negative numbers is the first naive idea i had, but maybe it breaks to many things. How do you deal with old clients when presented a negative number

I saw somebody suggesting to use float numbers to solve another problem. Maybe it breaks less things?

You could reposition all cards tens to start at something like 10,000, and then you would not need to shift cards until you added at least 10,000 to the top of the queue.

Yes, i was already considering doing something like this

Just 100 instead of 10,000 because im not sure where new cards are added

Are cards new always added at the end? I ask because it feels they are added randomly

I just tested it and it added the card 5 cards on top of the last one, but next one was added right after that one

When you reposition cards, Tools>Check Database will allow Anki to notice the new end of the queue.

I see

Should i do check database from the addon once i reposition cards? or is okay/safe to leave it like that

Personally, I dont care that much what the end of the new cards looks like because I always reposition what i want to be presented next

If you don’t care about the position new cards are inserted in, you could skip the DB check.

Would it be possible to just retrieve the last position before inserting? why is it fixed like that

I do retrieve the first position available every time i insert in my addon. Wouldnt it be possible to check the right number instead of having to run a whole check database to correct it?

It was implemented that way to avoid having to scan through all the cards to find the latest position each time a card is added.

Maybe mass inserts is crazy to query the database every time, but normal 1 time inserts is it really that bad?

I insert an average of 10 cards/day, and my worst day was 40

I have a query in my addon to show the first position on mouse hover and its instant. I have around 50k cards, so not a small collection either

Honestly, I mostly dont care, but its just weird that you cant predict where the insert is going to happen