> I see a lot mnemonic tricks, apps, etc. for foreign language learning. For some reason, a lot of focus on Japanese, specifically (never seen a post about learning Spanish on Hacker News). My opinion of these apps and techniques is, by and large, very low. If you want to be proficient, you should be reading and writing as much material as possible, and you can remember Chinese characters mostly with rote memorization, with maybe a little bit of mnemonics to help you get started. Only a small percentage of Chinese characters are pictograms. Once you get into the 500-1,000 character range, you’ll be making guesses at character meanings from context and radicals.

> Coming up with better mnemonics, or better ways to introduce mnemonics, is a low-value activity. You can go through an entire book of mnemonics that teaches you 1,000 Chinese characters and retain none of it.

That's not my experience at all. Please see my link detailing my own experience with the Heisig method.