Technology

“Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees”

Except for the contract employees. Fuck those people.

In 2012, we bet on mobile. [...] That decision helped us win the 2013 iPhone App of the Year and unlocked the organic word-of-mouth growth that followed. Betting on mobile made all the difference. We’re making a similar call now, and this time the platform shift is AI.

I think this is some sort of fallacy, not sure which tho. Maybe a hasty generalization? "We bet on mobile twelve years ago and won, so if we bet on AI now we'll also win."

*It also seems they're using AI to code... those poor programmers will have to double check every single line it shits out because you know, it's a fucking AI. Yet another company succumbs to a CEOs emotional FOMO.

It's okay. We can all play that game. I've replaced my use of Duolingo with AI.

Pro tip: have as your "system prompt" in your LLM of choice "at the end of every query, include me a short Swedish relates to my prompt". No need for Duolingo.

Duolingo uninstalled

uninstalls Duolingo

leaves 1-star app review

They have been shilling max so hard, the practice tab now is hidden to make room for the Video Call tab (Max only) and a tab to subscribe to Max or upgrade your plan.

Probably won’t renew this year. I have a 1500+ day streak, but a good chunk of that is just doing a single quick practice lesson every day, the gamification got me and I haven’t learned much new stuff in probably a year.

I learned enough Italian to use it when I went on a two week trip in 2023, but the problem with Duo’s lessons is nothing is conversational. I would be able to say/ask something, understand the response, but then not really have the ability to keep the conversation going.

The differences in languages after so many years is also a bit disheartening, I had a friend show me all the tools available in their French course that I didn’t have, it made their Italian lessons look like vocab flash cards in comparison.

I am not a big LLM user, but I did try to use it as a conversation partner, which worked alright. I haven’t looked in a while, but my biggest issue was it would speak too fast and none of the available tools had a way to slow it down outside of telling it to add ellipses after each word.

Welp, time to quit

There are at least some Duolingo courses that use AI voices exclusively and they are shit.

On the one hand, having an AI to talk to sounds like something that could be good. Getting a real person to talk to every user would be impossible. I just don’t think the technology is going to meet expectations any time soon.

R.I.P Doulingo.

Fuck their greed, I know that the bulk of their users wouldn't caffè if the CEO started shooting puppies on Main Square, but they can train their AI on Deez

Well, I prepaid for a year about 2 months ago. I'm gonna use it, but not renew. Fuck em

For those who aren't leaving Duolingo, you can still get the paid features by creating a class and joining it. Or at least that's how it worked the last time I used it, which was a few years ago now.