Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40555712/duolingo-suddenly-has-over-twice-as-much-language-learning-material <comment><USER2> I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row.

Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that.

French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta course just to see. It was very awkward. The correct answers are always cringe worthy. Some of them even wrong.

Japanese: This is very different from the languages I speak. But after completing the entire suite, I still can't look at a japanese text and read it. I can't form a sentence on my own because it never teaches you how. I can't count to ten because it only gives you numbers randomly. I know a few colors. I know words, but those words make no sense on their own. I also had to follow youtube lessons to make any sense of what I learned.

Duolingo is cool at making it look fun to learn. I don't think you'll learn to speak any languages with it.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I speak Portuguese fluently as a second language, and wanted to see what the Duolingo material was like. First warning sign: I couldn't pass the test to study intermediate content, because a significant proportion of the multiple-choice answers were just _wrong_. Then, looking at the beginner content, a shocking number of answers were wrong as well. It was kind of funny, since each piece of material had user comments associated, you'd see 70+ comments from people all complaining about wrong answers.

That immediately destroyed any trust with them. When you put out educational material, it has to be correct. That _has_ to be the foundation.

<comment><USER4> I'm a Turkish native speaker and I couldn't pass their intermediate Turkish material as well.

EDIT: Also it felt like the whole game was written from an "Indo-European" perspective. For example, in Turkish there is a word "bir" (read [biɾ]) which literally means "one" which is sometimes used akin to indefinite articles (a/an). But they're not exactly indefinite articles, and sentence usually makes sense without them and when you speak fast you omit them. But in Duolingo they taught as if you should translate "the X" without "bir" and "a/an X" with "bir". That's not even remotely close to the truth (and made me get all "article" questions wrong). In Turkish definiteness is mostly denoted with accusative case. There is no single language construct similar to "article", you infer it from other kinds of information. For example "dolaba bira koy" : "put A beer in the fridge" vs "dolaba biraYI koy" : "put THE beer in the fridge". You add +I accusative suffix to "bira" (beer). This was not even mentioned in Duolingo. It also makes sense that they don't mention this sicne this is probably super advanced nuanced speaking, but then be consistent and don't teach that "bir" distinction to beginners as well.

<comment><USER5> >You add +I accusative suffix to [imply definiteness]

Very interesting! In Russian, the accusative suffix would play exactly the opposite role. While there's no real way to say _the_ beer without additional context, you can say:

поставь пиво в холодильник / put the beer in the fridge

поставь пива в холодильник / put SOME beer into the fridge

<comment><USER6> пива (as partitive gen.) here sounds really weird to me, like you're pouring it out of a can into something else, and putting that in the fridge. If it's a can you can emphasise it with a number e.g. я поставил _одну_ банку пива в холодильник :)

 _not a native speaker, just living and studying russian in moscow_

<comment><USER7> The partitive here is to express that the speaker is not specifying in what form or shape the beer in the fridge should appear. For a native speaker it sounds like you are talking about some quantity of beer but omitted the quantity so it's literally just some unspecified quantity of beer.

<comment><USER6> So you would say that though? Like I've just never heard my хозяйка квартиры say that is all. I hear it often in things like "would you like some tea/beer?" etc or "i'm going to buy some tea/beer" but never like that. My impression was that outside of those contexts it's not popular. Mind sharing some examples? Would be really useful! :)

<comment><USER7> You probably would never hear somebody saying "Поставь пива в холодильник." since, while a correct sentence, it would need some rare circumstances to be said. Поставь here is much more concrete than "put", it's more like "place" and I could imagine saying this only if I had been managing the fridge at some party and noticed it's running out of beer so I requested somebody to add more beer there. Much more common would be "Принеси/достань/возьми пива из холодильника" (get some beer from the fridge).

<comment><USER5> >You probably would never hear somebody saying "Поставь пива в холодильник." since, while a correct sentence, it would need some rare circumstances to be said. [...] I could imagine saying this only if I had been managing the fridge at some party and noticed it's running out of beer

Yup, pretty much that. Or like that one time when we went binge-shopping on craft beers, but there was only enough space in the fridge for a couple of bottles; so that was a normal request about an hour before we were to watch a movie. Which is pretty much the exact situation you described :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reason Duolingo is ineffective in my opinion is multi-faceted. First, my main language for study is Japanese, and Duolingo's Japanese course is _awful_ \- these are the specific things I noticed when trying it:

\- There were several factual errors in their material and important points entirely omitted

\- Japanese grammar is very flexible and their tools aren't, so they often mark you as wrong when you were correct

\- Their approach to learning Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) is completely ineffective

These flaws make me wonder if they even had actual Japanese users working on developing the tools for learning Japanese. I can't speak to any other languages, but my experience with Japanese leads me to belive they don't have expertise in many of the languages they offer, instead trying to cram their prepackaged square-shaped tools into a variety of circle-shaped holes. All languages are different and each requires a different approach.

On top of that, however, is that they don't go nearly far enough. In my opinion there's no magic bullet that can teach you a language. Each student learns differently and will need to leverage a large variety of tools. Even if Duolingo's course were good, it would only make up a small facet of an effective study strategy. Vocabulary drilling with flash cards, focused grammatical study, reading genuine material in the language, writing novel material in the target language, and regular conversation practice with native speakers are all incredibly important and distinct topics of study. Duolingo tries to mix a diet version of each into an scatterbrained, ineffectual method of study.

<comment><USER9> Once you have the basics down, I like anki or memrise better for picking up vocab. You can do decks based on JLPT levels or do Core 2k/6k. Here's the memrise course series I am using (6000 words broken up into chunks of 500, frequency optimized):

[https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-voc...](https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-vocabulary- optimized-pt-1/) (first of 500 of 6000)

[https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-voc...](https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-vocabulary- optimized-pt-2/) (next 500 words)

[https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-voc...](https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-vocabulary- optimized-pt-3/)

[https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-voc...](https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-vocabulary- optimized-pt-4/)

The "SGJL" series also does grammar but it was easier to just reread tae kim every so often: [https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested- guide...](https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide-for- japanese-literacy-sgjl-course-series/1100)

<comment><USER10> Nice resources. I should probably elaborate on my actual study methods:

\- Vocabulary study with Anki

\- Kanji study (RTK order) with a script that shows vocab on my desktop

\- Grammar study via Tae Kim

\- Listening practice with regular consumption of Japanese music & television

\- Reading/writing practice by engaging in Japanese discussions on Mastodon, IRC, 2channel

\- Reading practice with Japanese manga and novels

\- Regular meetups with friends (native speakers) IRL

\- Translating anime and manga from Japanese to English

Soon I'd like to start blogging in Japanese, too, but that's a lot of work. Can also recommend jisho.org as the best Japanese/English dictionary on the web, and djt's bunpou guide as a deep grammar reference resource.

<comment><USER11> Can you share how you're showing the vocab on the desktop? That would be a neat study tool.

<comment><USER10> [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/lib/python3/kotd](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/lib/python3/kotd)

Warning: this is a mess

<comment><USER11> Thanks! What do you use to display this on your desktop?

<comment><USER10> This binary puts a porcelain command on the Python library:

[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/bin/kotd](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/bin/kotd)

This command is run by my status bar, which prints each line sent to stdout on my desktop:

[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/bin/custom_statusb...](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/bin/custom_statusbar)

Which is powered by sway:

[http://swaywm.org](http://swaywm.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've used Duolingo for about a year now.

This is what I discovered:

1) It can't be your one learning source. You get the essence of the language but you'll never become fluent.

2) It's very good at keeping you engaged. It gets an A from me on that.

3) The web app is stricter and will force you to learn better than the Android app

4)On the Android app you can get thru the challenges without learning a thing. You can just guess.

5)Your mindset should be to learn as opposed to getting thru the challenges.

6)Grammar is important so make sure you read the text they post on the web app. The phone app does not have it.

7)Find someone to speak the language with you ASAP. Speaking is the fastest way to fluency.

8)They've started to monetize the app so ads are a problem now. And ad-free is expensive.

9) It's many times better than the in-class teaching I got in junior high. They should replace the 1st few semesters with the app.

</comment><comment><USER13> The biggest issue I have with Duolingo is that they offer "grammar notes" to explain why specific elements are the way they are... but only on desktop web. In-app, which is the main way that I (and I'd imagine most users) use Duolingo, there are no grammar notes and no way to access the grammar notes - they just seem to assume that you'll pick it up from context. Personally I've been studying Russian, a language with extremely complex grammar much of which has no analogue in English or Spanish (the two other languages I speak), and were I not supplementing Duolingo with a textbook that actually explains the grammar, I would be extremely confused.

<comment><USER14> I really can't understand why they don't provide the grammar notes in their mobile apps. If it's trivial things like table rendering then I'm sure they can come up with _something_. It's such a crucial part of learning another language and it's completely ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have any experience with the Fluent Forever approach? Their Kickstarter campaign received more than twice the amount requested[0]. Their book is currently selling for $2 on Amazon[1], and has some glowing reviews.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15498952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15498952) [1] [https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language- Forget-...](https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget- ebook/dp/B00IBZ405W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523571330&sr=8-1&keywords=fluent+forever%27)

<comment><USER16> It works. And it's written by someone who's (a) learned multiple languages himself, (b) done the research on human language learning and memory/expertise to condense an immensely effective method into a book.

He's gathered a vast amount of material for French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and more on his website, [https://fluent-forever.com](https://fluent- forever.com). I've used his pronunciation trainers for Spanish and Japanese, and it's obvious the enormous effort he's put into all of his materials. Wyner obviously loves his work.

Learning a language has no shortcuts - only different methods with varying levels of effectiveness, i.e. fluency gained per hour of work put in. I can say that of all the apps and methods I've tried, from Pimsleur to Rosetta Stone to Duolingo and Memrise, Fluent Forever is by far the most effective one.

I used it to learn Spanish for a few weeks - his approach of learning pronunciation first, then basic vocabulary, seems counterintuitive at first, but it really, really works. Which I found out to my pleasure when I went to Spain on vacation with my friends. Even though they'd studied Spanish all throughout high school, both my pronunciation and my fluency were miles above theirs. I couldn't employ advanced tenses, but as he explains in the book, it'd be impossible for me to fluently internalize more advanced grammar before the simpler forms for any language, anyways.

I've moved on to Japanese for now, since I have a much longer trip there coming up. This will take much, much longer (it's a Category V language versus a Category I language), but so far it's been just as effective at teaching me pronunciation and hiragana/katakana (their phonetic lettering system).

I highly recommend the book - it's practically free at that price. Compare it to the $300 you'd spend on Rosetta Stone and don't hesitate.

<comment><USER16> And for further knowledge - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508440) \- this is the comment that got me to look into Fluent Forever in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I particularly like the audio courses from Language Transfer. They create rules that help you transfer words from English into a destination language.

For example, words ending in ation in English, will end in ación in Spanish. Further, these words are also 'ar' verbs.

Conversation -> Conversación -> Conversar

I've found it quite helpful, especially in conjunction with Duolingo. At some point, I realized what I learned via Language Transfer was applying more as I progressed in Duolingo.

[https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete- spanish](https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish)

</comment><comment><USER18> I speak Irish pretty well and Duolingo I think is a fantastic tool to get better and learn some new words that I didn't no. (Neither my dad nor I knew portán meant crab). The issue is that pronunciation in Irish is kinda varied but the lady who does it for Duolingo is on some extreme. The majority of Irish speakers would not pronounce things that way in the slightest and it would be misleading for someone who learned on the app to actually try and speak it as I'm not sure I would understand them

<comment><USER19> This is a good point. Especially for minority languages like Irish, they can end up being completely dominated in mass-media by a specific group. Duolingo and TG4 (main Irish-language tv channel) mostly speak Gaeilge Cúige Connacht (the western dialect) meaning the northern and southern pronunciation and style are neglected.

<comment><USER20> Which is funny, as the Caighdeán hardly reflects Connemara Irish at all. It's mostly Munster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Doing Duolingo well just makes you better at doing duolingo. In real world, even in your native language, there are certain situations that can make you tongue tied. The goal of practicing with teachers from sites like iTalki is to get you comfortable opening your mouth and spitting out something, anything. To get past the fear of saying the wrong thing and just saying something. However, if you want to say the right thing and just spit it out, there is a way...

For most people learning a second language, one of the fastest ways to learn can be the most painful way for some of us to learn. Rote memorization. Bor- ing. Methods like Assimil and Glossika and others use this as their core method, with some tweaks.

By memorizing grammatically correct phrases, you will know that you are saying something correctly. I've heard saying that some incorrectly things is literally like I just wrote - your brain processes based on patterns and when you say it in the wrong subject-verb order or even phrase cadence, the person listening gets confused and sometimes irritated.

If you are musically inclined, this can be song lyrics. Or you can hire someone to translate things that you would like to say from your native language into your second language.

You must memorize phrases because memorizing single words without the context of an enclosing sentence can create bad habits that have to be unlearned later.

Like learning violin, mastering the fundamentals are important before you can learn to play music. For learning a language, the two most important things are speaking with the right accent and speaking like a native speaker would in a given situation (which is usually grammatically correct but smooth).

</comment><comment><USER22> has anyone had success with any of these language-learning apps, even as supplemental material to a more traditional education?

I've tried to use Duolingo for Japanese, with very little success on its own. Paired with my own studying, it was only a bit more helpful, but not more helpful than flashcards.

Another app, LingoDeer, was better, because it had a curriculum and more unified lessons, and I could swap between Kanji/Katakana/Hiragana at will to learn one at a time. (Whereas DuoLingo will bring you to 15% understanding of Hiragana before dumping you into Katakana).

<comment><USER23> I had taken some Japanese in high school, and French in college, and later done some Duolingo to try to brush up my French, but then abandoned it.

I recently picked it back up again (couple of months ago), and tried doing both Japanese and French. I find the French one much more helpful. The Japanese module is still in beta, and it shows; tapping on one word to look them up if you don't remember them doesn't work well in Japanese but it works fine in French.

And yeah, I found the Japanese curriculum pretty lacking, and the kanji really hard to learn in this format.

I did find an interesting way to practice my hiragana and katakana, though. I created a slide deck using Tinycards (Duolingo's flash-card app, I found it a lot easier to set up and use than Anki even if it's less powerful) in which I would have to write the kana using the handwriting input method for Japanese. I found that actually trying to write out the characters was way more helpful for remembering them then just clicking on the right one out of a list.

However, I couldn't figure out a good way to get Duolingo to give me a list of the kanji I was supposed to have learned by now to use that with kanji, and figured it would be too much of a pain to go back through all of the lessons, write all of that down and then create the flash cards manually from that.

I've quit with the Duolingo Japanese lessons by now, I think I want to wait until they're a little more fully baked, and even then I'll probably need some other outside resources to study along with.

I think Duolingo in its current form is a good way to stay practiced with a language and learn some vocabulary and grammar, but only for some of the languages. However, even for those languages, you will need some other resources to really develop fluency.

<comment><USER24> I've found WaniKani to be amazing for SRS for kanji. If you are diligent about it you can go through the jouyou set in 18 months or so.

<comment><USER23> Looks interesting. I think I'd have to be a lot more dedicated to that, and need some other resource for learning grammar, vocabulary, and testing complete sentences.

The nice thing about Duolingo for, say, French is that I can kind of mindlessly do it every day to keep my skills up and improve my vocabulary, and then do smaller bouts of studying using other methods to improve actual fluency.

But with Japanese, Duolingo just doesn't work very well, and just learning kanji with WaniKani would miss all of the rest of the context, so I'd need something to pair with that for learning the rest of the language. Any recommendations on good resources for learning the actual spoken language to go along with WaniKai?

<comment><USER25> > Any recommendations on good resources for learning the actual spoken > language to go along with WaniKai?

BunPro is pretty good. It's fairly light on its own lessons, but will point in the right direction for material on each grammar point (both online and in the Genki books), and then has a spaced repetition framework for practice/memorising. It also ties into WaniKani fairly well, so that once you've learnt a kanji in WaniKani it will stop showing the furigana so you get kanji practice at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have only used Duolingo for languages I am fluent in. There is a mode somewhere where you can take a set of exams to see where you place on the fluency spectrum in any given language they offer. I do this for pure curiosity to see how far I get up on their "track". I find it to be a super shallow and lacking system - the words encountered have little to do in the way of everyday conversation, things you see on TV, the grocery store, or even most professional settings. I don't have too many examples off the top of my head, but one that really kept coming up in the French test was "the little spider is red" \- When does someone need this? Whys is this any mark of proficiency?

I always leave feeling as though this app/product is a giant waste of time.

<comment><USER23> Hmm. Those all seem like fairly basic words to know; OK, maybe "spider" isn't as common a word to need, but it is something that comes up in conversation sometimes. That particular phrase isn't one you're going to have to say very often, but I'd say it would be pretty hard to say you're fluent in a language if you don't know those words.

I've been doing Duolingo for French for the past few months, trying to dust off the couple of semesters of French I took in college and get a bit beyond that to maybe get to the point where I can get by. Yes, there is a bit skewed towards things like family relationships, clothes, the house at the beginning; things that might be important if you're living somewhere but possibly less important if you're just visiting. But they are always adding new content, and as the original article points out they just did a revamp to give access to a lot of newer content they hadn't provided access to before.

I don't know; a language generally has a huge amount of vocabulary, as well as grammar to learn, and you need to learn it in some order.

The main thing I do find lacking is that it's pretty much all translation or transcription of simple sentences, or word matching. I do find these helpful for learning vocabulary and grammar, but they aren't going to lead to fluency. The article does mention that something that they are working on is longer listening comprehension exercises, which I think would help out with that a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What really bothers me about Duolingo is its Rosetta Stone approach to language learning. For adults, learning by osmosis is not a thing for languages. The creator has said that the reason the grammar notes (as bare bones as they are) are not available in the apps, is, that he wants, users to pick up the grammar through the exercises.

I study French, German and Russian at uni, and for doing translations, or even just writing letters or speaking, this is not good enough. You want to be comfortable in a language, and that comes with a rock solid grammar foundation, as 'dull' as it seems.

As many have said, Duolingo should be a tool amongst many. It has actually been really helpful for drilling through particular problem areas where I get a case wrong here or there.

What they really need to do is get listening and reading comprehension out there; working alongside some people who really never understand grammar explanations, they can often work it out in their head after reading through a passage with a few examples, it makes it personal to them and they can see the 'point' of the rule.

Also they need to get a better vocab tool, memrise/anki style. Sometimes I just wanna practice shopping items because I'm on the bus to get 'groceries' and I wanna make sure im all sured up.

<comment><USER27> I have found that a combination of Duolingo / Rosetta Stone in combination with the FSI Courses ( [https://www.livelingua.com/fsi-language- courses.php](https://www.livelingua.com/fsi-language-courses.php) ) gives a good combination of Grammar + Speaking material to learn a language.

<comment><USER6> The FSI language stuff is great, highly recommend!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm learning Italian with English as the base language. One of the things I felt with Duolingo (at least the "old" version, didn't try the new version) is that the exercises make you write mostly in English, not Italian, which is the main point of why I'm on Duolingo in the first place.

It's rare for an exercise that makes you write in Italian, even when assembling your own sentences is the basics for those who are learning a new language. Finishing an entire module doesn't make you entitled to write anything.

So I inverted things. Instead of the Italian course, I applied to the English course (which I am already fluent) as an Italian native speaker. This way, I write mostly in Italian, with almost no exercises to write in English (same problem with the Italian course).

Learning has been much more effective.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm still puzzled by duolingo - it uses an outdated pedagogy and an overemphasis on 'fun'. I have only looked briefly at the courses but I find the structure unconvincing.

Regarding something mentioned in the article: what is the point of learning 'entertaining' phrases like 'they are washing the holy potato'. From a pedagogical point of view this is a waste of time is no better than the famous 'plume de ma tante' (look that up if you want to know more).

For any language learner, it's important to remember that the most fun you can have in language learning is experiencing success. That success needs to come from your language acquisition, not arbitrary games.

Learning a language is great!

<comment><USER30> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_plume_de_ma_tante_(lingui...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_plume_de_ma_tante_\(linguistics\))

Saved you a click

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Duolingo has to be supplemented with reading and / or YouTube materials in the language of choice. Any language course the examples are necessarily contrived and never to your exact needs. But we have the internet and can look for (and hopefully find) something that matches our interests.

If you're looking to do business in Japanese... then you need to be looking at the NHK news app which has beginner resources. If you're looking to do scholarship in German or Spanish or cooking in French then you need to search for vocab resources connected to those tasks.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting to see how many people don't find Duolingo or other apps to be effective learning tools. I spent the last 2 years creating a Thai learning app (that I think of as a 'digital textbook') specifically to address the issues that many people here raise. I won't cite the name since I'm not trying to advertise, just bringing it up as a talking point.

Duolingo does lots of AB testing and found that gamification greatly increased user engagement, but I think that they took it too far and lost the forest in the trees.

Everyone learns differently but in my experience you need to hear or read explanations of the second language in your native tongue and then hear that construction in the second language to reinforce it, because the key is lots of comprehensible input.

Can a complex sentence become comprehensible input with just games? Sure, but if someone can explain how the grammar works in English then you can get to that same point faster and without the guess work. That's my opinion, at least, and so far users are seeming to find it effective since reviews have been largely positive!

I think that serious language students will seek out appropriate apps or textbooks, and Duolingo will be a fun option for people that want a mixture of cognitive exercise and entertainment that may also be useful when they're traveling or interacting in a foreign language.

<comment><USER33> ctrl+f "Thai". Since Duolingo doesn't have a Thai module, would you mind sharing your app?

<comment><USER32> Sure the main app is called Pocket Thai Master and it teaches reading and speaking, with cultural notes and historical facts sprinkled throughout.

I've also made a second app that is a subset of the first that only teaches reading, which I creatively named Pocket Thai Reading.

I'm currently re-writing a lot of the content to create a pared down version for travelers that teaches basic grammar and vocab through audio and transcriptions and without learning the Thai script. It takes many hours to learn the script and it is 100% worthwhile if you're living in Thailand and it's great for pronunciation, but it isn't a worthwhile use of time for people that might just be visiting for a week or two.

If you take a look and have any feedback I'd be happy to hear it - I'm actively working on updates! Next update I'm trying to add some different exercises to test comprehension since it's multiple choice quizzes only right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The biggest problem I had with Duolingo was knowing what to do next. I much prefer a simple "next lesson" button, which both introduces new material and reviews stuff you've covered previously. But with Duolingo there's a set of available lessons you can choose, and you can either work on going down the list and opening up new lessons, or re-doing ones you've already done and leveling up those particular ones. Then there's also a "barbell" which you can press and takes you into some lesson, but I never quite figured out what it did. But I spent quite a while getting a bunch of "crowns" on the first few lessons (essentially, doing them over and over) before realizing I should be doing some forward progress as well.

My wife is a fan of the app and recently paid for premium, but I'm personally a little happier (at least for my use case of Spanish) with Babbel, which I pay for. It has a single way forward, so you never have to choose what to work on next, and that single way will bring back earlier stuff just to refresh your memory for you. It also has little grammar asides, which I found very helpful, and which Duolingo lacks.

<comment><USER35> > Then there's also a "barbell" which you can press and takes you into some > lesson, but I never quite figured out what it did.

It takes you into a lesson that it thinks you should review next. Duolingo is meant to implement spaced repetition in that it keeps track of all the times you have seen every word, and it tries to give you lessons that are "due" for repetition according to its algorithm. In the web interface they show you how "strong" each word is in their opinion, but I found that their data on when you last saw a word was buggy.

Anyway, the barbell is useful to keep you up to speed by revisiting stuff once you have finished all the lessons once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> [Meta]

So far in this thread, there are several comments that _could_ be the grounds for substantive discussion, but don't bother offering the substance. For example: _Why_ does jonbarker recommend Anki for going deeper than "complete beginner"? What does zealsham mean by Duolingo lacking a "structural syllabus" and why is that problematic?

The conversations can be a very valuable part of HN, but not if most comments are at the level of "I still find their spaced repetition lacking" with only the tiniest bit of elaboration. Hopefully I'm not out of place in encouraging something more substantive.

<comment><USER37> If you're interested in learning more about something someone said, maybe you could reply to them with a question?

People often respond well to a bit of encouragement, and replies are more likely to be seen than a meta-comment.

<comment><USER36> Of course, and to the extent that I want answers to those specific questions I'm happy to ask.

Asking individual questions, though, doesn't encourage a different mindset in the way that I hope my meta-comment will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This thread is living proof why many people are seemingly unable to learn languages (well): they're more concerned with tools and methodologies instead of simply putting in the effort and learning the language they want to learn (emphasis on "want to learn"). Yes, it's (sometimes hard) work to learn a language and there is no magical fairy dust.

<comment><USER39> The top comment is from someone who put 370 days straight into Duolingo and completed the content for multiple languages. Is that indicative of someone unwilling to "simply [put] in the effort"?

<comment><USER38> Yes, straight into Duolingo. A tool. A gimmick. And the results were, according to the commenter, underwhelming. But I can tell you what I mean by putting in the effort: I had to learn Classical Latin and pass an exam in order to enrol in University in Germany. For that I took a two-month crash course.

What did we do in this course? 4 weeks of grammar, interspersed with reading, analyzing and translating classical texts, then 4 weeks of reading, analyzing and translating classical texts. 4 hours in class plus 2-4 hours self-study each day. It worked like a charm. The bottom line: if your aim is to read classical texts, read classical texts. And the key here was not that I learned 4-8 hours each day, the key was that the learning was not dumbed down, gamified, artificially made fun. And I have found that this is applicable to pretty much every other language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems the author didn't bother to really check the app's forum where users are heavily complaining (about 1500 comments in the main announcement thread) about the redesign, which at best was handle badly (people didn't understand what was happening) and at worst has removed critical features like spaced repetition.

</comment><comment><USER41> The new version is very good for Chinese. It is giving me much more complex sentence structure.

<comment><USER42> I'm just annoyed it forces you to learn the writing system.

<comment><USER43> Right, when I'm learning mathematics I hate how they force you to learn math notation.

Learning a romanized version of a language is not learning a language. Sounds in one language don't map neatly to English sounds, and beginner language learners who use romanization always have pronunciation issues because their headspace isn't in the language, it's in a romanized variant of that language.

What's the point of learning Chinese or any other script language if you don't learn the script?

<comment><USER44> > What's the point of learning Chinese or any other script language if you > don't learn the script?

I once learned Chinese in a very intensive course that focused on the spoken language and only taught a few hundred characters. It has proven very useful for my occasional travels in China, being able to interact with hotels etc., having nice enjoyable conversations with my drivers when hitchhiking, etc. For me, my present skills are enough for what I want to get out of the country; for me, China is just one country among many. The few characters I know are enough of a bare minimum to find my way around. If I were keen on reading Chinese literature, then I would definitely go further with characters, but there is value for many people in having simply a minimum command of the language.

<comment><USER45> What was the course?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Pimsleur audio books all the way. It's spaced-learning/repetition with conversations.

<comment><USER47> Came here to say the same. Pimsleur is also excellent for pronunciation and I have this feeling that once I learned something from the course, I never forget it. It just sticks, even after months or years. It is also most similar to how babies learn - without grammar, reading and writing, just by dialogue.

<comment><USER48> Yes, Pimsleur gives you excellent pronounciation and the sentences really stick (which is very good, of course!).

But apart from that? It doesn't teach you grammar, so you are repeating and repeating like a parrot, hoping that one day you will know why they say XY in one sentence and YX in another sentence. It's true that babies don't learn formal grammar, but they usually grow up in an environment with full immersion (several hours per day over several years), surrounded by native adults who give their best to interprete, repeat and correct (!) their utterances.

In addition, Pimsleur is very slow but it gives you the illusion that you are learning a lot by keeping you constantly busy. At the end, how many words do you learn in three levels? 400? That's barely A1! Most annoying, 70% (just a guess) of the time, you are just listening to the English speaker ("Now repeat this", "Try to say that",...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've tried with Duolingo quite a bit, but what I studied never seemed to stay in my memory. I've had much better luck with Language Transfer - [https://www.languagetransfer.org](https://www.languagetransfer.org)

Disclaimer: the guy who runs it is a friend, but I met him through the project.

</comment><comment><USER50> Low efficacy ed-tech solutions like this don't work.

Context is king in languages.

I think true solutions have to account for the following in language learning:

Video / Audio

Dual Subtitles

Transliterated Subtitles

Tongue Positioning for Pronounciation

I haven't found a solution that does this....

<comment><USER51> I would pay good money for a speech to text plus translated text solution - something like a dual subtitle AR set up. I am probably unusual in that translation is less of a problem for me than accuracy in hearing. I invariably wish the other side of the conversation had much better diction/ clear pronunciation. I often find that I am hearing very different sounds from what my conversation partner later tells me they were saying. I don't have this problem with English but I do when the partner is speaking the three languages I have studied (French, Japanese and Spanish - none of which have particularly foreign phonemes from English). Any phone apps that do something like this well?

<comment><USER48> > I often find that I am hearing very different sounds from what my > conversation partner later tells me they were saying.

That's normal. Everybody has the same problem to some degree. Your brain is mapping what it hears to the sounds and sound sequences that it knows from your native language. That's usually a good thing because it helps humans to understand others even in the presence of background noise or speech impediments.

Less probable but also possible: You have a hearing loss which your brain is able to compensate for your native language, but not for foreign languages. Had a friend with that problem. He was not able to discriminate between similar words starting with different sibilant sounds. He didn't have the problem in his native language because he knew from context which word would come.

Have you tried to listen to audio books based on books that you know very well in your native language?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Nifty.

I've been able to use Duolingo to bootstrap my way into being able to sort of read French. It's also decent at drills in German, a language I took in college.

I really like Duolingo for drills and for getting a sort of 101-level language map. A lot of the early sentences are absurdly inane, to be honest, but they are useful in the drill sense.

That said, I took a run at Chinese, a language which I see as something potentially really useful, and it was a complete non-starter.

</comment><comment><USER53> In my opinion, Duolingo tries to teach language by forcing familiarity. I for one, just cannot learn a language using that method. I like to learn starting with fundamentals - alphabet, grammar, words, sentences and so on.

Are there any recommended books/material to learn Spanish that way? Everyone says spanish is easy to learn, but all apps kinda try to teach you by repetitive methods with no insights in to the structure of the language.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've used Duolingo and Memrise for a year learning Mandarin Chinese They both have pros and cons Memrise has native speakers in videos saying the phrases you learned Duolingo forces you to learn the characters rather than letting you get by with pinyin Duolingo is often slightinly wrong or not natural either in the english or the chinese translating

</comment><comment><USER55> I still find their spaced repetition lacking. I never see some of the words again after seeing them for the first time.

<comment><USER56> Perhaps that's because they have too many words?

If you look at some of the core languages like German the course has a 'words' tab and it shows you exactly how strong it thinks you know each word and when you saw each word last.

It could be different between languages, and who knows how well it works.. but it's definitely something they seem to be working on and putting thought into.

<comment><USER55> Thing is, I do less than 1 lesson per day. Probably 3 lessons per two weeks. Meaning that I press Practice button about 100 times in that two week period.

After about 40 days, I went back to go through some of the previous lessons, given their new Crown update, and realized I haven't seen some of the words at all.

Despite having around 400 words learned so far.

<comment><USER56> Don't forget to take into account that new words are added to each course regularly. For newer languages and any of the beta languages, the words you are taught can change very frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I think Duolingo is good for getting you past complete beginner but to go deeper I recommend Anki.

<comment><USER38> 1\. If you read enough, (spaced) repetition occurs naturally. No need for a software.

2\. It's not bad to forget words during the learning process.

3\. Purely personal: SRS reviewing is the ultimate bore, however you design your cards. And making the cards is even more of a bore. It's the opposite of fun.

<comment><USER57> It's good for 'grinding it out' type learning tasks. Example: I sat for and passed all three ham radio exams in one shot mainly because of an android ham radio exam prep app that did SRS. No way I could have done that just by reading ham radio study guides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> How much does it cost to place an an advertisement masquerading as an article at fast company?

<comment><USER59> Unfortunately Duolingo is only getting bashed here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> And there is _still_ no Classical Latin despite years of requests and overwhelming support and a horde of volunteers and even a few forum posts with nearly complete but informal Classical Latin courses.

</comment><comment><USER61> Hi folks. I'll be talking to Duolingo next week about your criticisms and concerns. Feel free to ping me directly with any suggestions to ask them about. email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER62> I think google translate is good enough to learn from now. I think duolingo, rosettastone etc. aren't going to survive long.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is such a gift, getting to see so many dedicated users' experiences with the app. Will help my future coverage.

</comment><comment><USER63> Duolingo still lacks a structural syllabus

</comment><comment><USER64> BTW what are some good alternatives to Duolingo? More grammar-focused perhaps, less fun if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER65> Anyone have advice on learning French?

<comment><USER66> I did the following:

* Start the Duolingo tree

* Start Pimsleur French around checkpoint 2 when I realized I couldn't speak at all

* Start taking classes at Alliance Francaise when I started struggling with the grammar, starting at 103

* Spend at least a week in immersion in a Francophone country to solidify the learning

* Start drilling nouns + gender with Anki when I noticed that native speakers kept correcting my gender usage

<comment><USER65> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> avid Duolingo user here.

1 - the new update is a massive disaster (I'll explain in a bit). Maybe it's different for other languages, but for Russian language I vehemently hate the update. I dislike it so much that I tracked down Duolingo PM person on LinkedIN and tried to message them directly.

The app updated for me a week ago with one dialogue that I tapped to confirm. Thinking it's just another incremental update. Suddenly everything changed. I thought I might figure it out, but nope. The article says, _some of whom wrote excellent tutorials on the company's message board_ [0]. It's not a tutorial as much as people are very confused (glad it wasn't just me) how the new update works and it's just a LONG thread to help with the confusion. If a mobile UI/UX designed for a consumer app needs a long thread like this, you can see it's probably was a poorly executed update.

The UI/UX is not the worse part, the worse part is that now I hate using Duolingo. Let me explain:

Duolingo has been a great daily motivator for me. The gamification of the app (up to now) was excellent. That is its biggest benefit. It's a motivator with a structured progression plan. The Russian lessons are okay, but they're just the starting point, I often have to go online and google something to understand the grammatical reasoning. All together, I have now bought 4 Russian books plus a Russian cheatsheet. That's just the Russian version, I was told the French has some hints and explanations.

Some backgrounds on Duolingo's gamification parameters:

A - You have a daily goal. This could be 1 lesson, 2 or etc. Users set this goal. I set mine to 1 lesson/day but I often do more. Each day when you complete a lesson you get some points. You get more points (from a choice of troves) if you watch an ad.

B - Each lesson is inside a specific language skills. Like "Adjectives 1". There are 1-8 lessons inside each skills.

C - When you complete all lessons inside a language skill you get more points and then you can move to the next skill. Each lesson is a series of questions in form of translation from English to Russian. Russian to English or listening to a phrase and typing it in Russian. I think there are like 20 questions per lesson (but I have never counted them).

D - When you start a new lesson (up till this new update) you have life levels (IMPORTANT background about the new update.). This is exactly like a video game. You get 5 or 6 lives which are visually represented as slices of arcs of a circle around a heart. If you have a grammatical error each time you answer a question you lose one life. If you lose all your lives you're unable to complete the lesson. If you can complete a lesson you lose your streak. But you can use tokens you have accumulated or buy tokens to get more life. So you can reach your daily goal. However(till now), if you went back to an already completed lesson you would not use any lives. So you could repeat an existing lesson and make your daily quota. This had two benefits. One, I could directly pick which lesson I wanted to repeat. More importantly it was an stress-free process for me to accomplish my daily goal. Basically you're not anxious about losing your allocated lives and instead you can focus on language learning.

D - You have a consecutive daily streak. I'm currently at 197 days now. Which for me it's a biggest motivator. I also get daily email reminders. If you lose your daily streak you can pay from $2.99 to $9.99 to maintain it. $9.99 if you have a longer streak.

E - There is a double-or-nothing wager if you can maintain a 7 day streak. Basically you spend 50 tokens and if you maintain a 7 day streak you get 100 tokens back.

So what is so terribly wrong with the new update?

i - The UX as I mentioned above is incomprehensible. Basically there is a long thread on what all these things mean and do now.

ii - MOST IMPORTANTLY, they added a lot of anxiety now to learning a language. The biggest motivator for me which was maintaining my daily streak, has now become a source of anxiety. Why? Because I was able to repeat existing task without the risk of losing all my lives and still finish my daily goal. After finish my daily goal, I would either repeat another lesson that I thought I was weak at or start a new lesson. But, it was all risk free. So I had no worries about making any mistakes just focus on learning. Now, you have no choice on what specific lesson inside a skill you want to repeat and new level or old level you lose life with each mistake. As a result I started looking elsewhere to see what other app I could use.

So why did Duolingo make such an awful update? I'm guessing to increase their revenues. The new updates at least with my experience is forcing people to buy more lives to maintain their streaks. I think it might be their way to force out the people who are just casual users, and focus on serious users like myself and try to better monetize their serious users. In practically you could end up paying as much as $1.99/day to maintain your daily streak.

2 - Is it a helpful teaching tool? It's just a great motivator. I already speak two languages natively (because I'm an immigrant). I took one course of Japanese in college and I did okay. And I still remember some phrases. However, learning Russian proved to be harder than I thought. For one, I'm older now and we do not retain languages as fast. But also Russian grammar and way of thinking in that language is very different. Verbs not only have present and past (masculine, feminine) tenses, there is also concept of perfective and imperfective, also Imperatives. Then nouns have gender and also nouns have six different cases. Then there is variations on some of these rules for cases. All that said. It's the vocabulary that finally becomes the hardest part. Because there are no easy mnemonic to remember a word since there are very few associations to words we are familiar with in English.

As I said above, I had to buy 4 Russian books and one cheatsheet. One visual learning book, two books on Russian etymology to help me remember the words better by understanding their etymology. One Russian grammar book which helps explain a lot of the stuff. The Russian cheatsheet for a quick reference of a grammatical rule. I've recently play Russian101 pod twice a week when I'm driving which has been helpful learning some new phrases. With all these, I still have to google stuff when I'm using Duolingo to quickly understand something.

It's worth mentioning Duolingo added TinyCard, flashcards app. Which actually helped to retain some of these words. I often parallel my daily Duolingo with TinyCard. It was probably their most important teaching tool they added.

Basically, it's a great motivational tool. It's a free way to get you started and get you motivated. However, I'm not sure with the new update if the motivation to continue after the first lessons will be there or not.

[0] [https://www.duolingo.com/comment/26612939/Where-are-the- inst...](https://www.duolingo.com/comment/26612939/Where-are-the-instructions- for-new-skill-levels-crowns)

<comment><USER60> I understand viscerally this comment about something becoming a source of stress. Actually a couple of apps have done this to me in the past, and I immediately reject them (by uninstalling them) when I recognize that the app is using the anxiety and stress to twist the screws and get me to pay for something. Fuck that. I'm curious here, though. Except for not having an exceptionally long streak number associated with your username that you have earned, what penalties exist for not maintaining your streak? Does Duolingo like cut you off from completing lessons or otherwise impose restrictions on using the app if you don't maintain a streak?

Also, I've been putting a lot of time in the Russian module and I'm really disappointed that there's no way to learn the grammar rules in Duolingo. Russian especially has surprising behavior depending on the characters used.

<comment><USER67> So as I stated, Duolingo's value for me is the gamification of getting me to study Russian on the daily bases. BTW, I have used it for 2-3 years now. I've had various streaks of 50 days, 100 days, etc. I'm 1-2 days now from 200.

To answer you, when I went off grid for camping, I lost my steak. But that was it. I just had to start from zero streak again. However, my Russian lesson progress stayed where I left off.

There is (used to be) this power range under each level that you completed. And if you do not use the app for while, they gradually lose their power strength level. It's a way to ensure you return back to old lessons and you repeat them. But still does not effect your lesson progress.

At the end, Duolingo was a free (I actually paid a few times to retain my streak, so probably have paid them about $20 or more by now) way for me to have a structured/organized path to learn Russian with a motivator. I always find ways to complete my daily Russian lessons even in busy days. I think if the streak was not a factor I would have probably given up on that a while ago. If you really want to learn Russian you have to get more resources. Often when I googled some word = "russian grammar" I found an online source or class that explained which was very helpful. RussianPod101 has some free podcast lessons that is good to help you with pronunciation and also some common phrases. But you still need a proper grammar book to make it through it all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Do they have Sanskrit?

<comment><USER69> Unfortunately not. The only Indo-Aryan language I can find listed on DuoLingo is Hindi and that hasn't yet started beta testing.</comment></comment>


Kong Acquires Insomnia, Launches Kong Studio for API Development - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/02/kong-acquires-insomnia-launches-kong-studio-for-api-development/ <comment><USER2> With Kong Studio, they're now competing head to head with apiary, swaggerhub, stoplight.io, postman and more. Looks like Kong wants to be the king in API.

More competitions in the API space is good for the developers.</comment>


Luminus – A Clojure web framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.luminusweb.net/docs

<comment><AUTHOR> There has been a ton of discussion about what a clojure framework should be. I think Luminus with it's ability to wrap many independent libraries is a not- too-opinionated way to achieve something approachable.</comment>


Attention, please, for UK startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/07/uk_tech_is_anyone_listening.html

<comment><USER2> Everything about European startups is against them. Europe is so risk averse it's a joke. They (VCs and therefore startups) are under capitalized compared to US startups and have to try so much harder to get visibility of the "big 5" acquirers. VCs almost always favour revenue over customer growth.

Flipboard, Quora raised $10M. You think they could have done that based in the UK? No.

You think Twitter could have raised $200M from European investors? Not only is there not that kind of capital around, no one would go near it due to the lack of revenues.

I think a lot of this stuff goes back to two things: serial entrepreneurs becoming cautious angel investors rather than aspiring to build something _huge_ and the lack of large LP (eg: Harvard) that tip money into VC.

What are some noteworthy - big - startups? Skype. Spotify. Who else?

<comment><USER3> BS.

There are tons of European startups. But the have 'revenue' and 'profits'. Which means no one bothers reporting on them.

Don't you think $10M for some strange social news reader app seems a little over the top? or $200M for twitter? They're insane investmensts. The only reason SV investors invest is in the hope that someone even more drugged up on SV koolaid will buy the company. Bubbles upon bubbles. It's unsustainable.

I'm really happy that we're more risk averse in Europe.

Get real. Get revenue and good solid business models.

<comment><USER2> axod, you've built an awesome lifestyle company and you should be proud of that.

but some people want to build billion dollar companies - it's a matter of taste - but if you want to do that, especially if you want to do that in the consumer space - you often need to defer revenues for user growth.

and doing _that_ in Europe is very hard.

I'm really not sure this is even up for debate - _who_ are the startups you're thinking of?

again, different approaches to different companies with different aims.

I don't think $10M for a social news reader app is insane, nor do I think Twitter raising $200M is insane. Some people thought Facebook raising so much was insane - that they'd never make money - and look at them now, almost $1Bn in revenues.

You're not looking at bubbles, you're looking at investors placing _very specific bets_ on industries or trends in the hope that in five years from now they'll have another Facebook.

<comment><USER3> You're right - I'd rather play a much longer term game - build a business that sustains itself rather than saddle myself with investment.

>> "but some people want to build billion dollar companies"

How many of the big SV startups actually make a profit though? Sure, maybe on paper they're 'worth' millions since people invested at a certain level, but I don't think that's healthy. Isn't it the least bit worrying when Reddit starts asking users to donate money? After it was sold for millions?

You can't compare Facebook + Twitter. Facebook is a _destination_. Their website gets a massive amount of eyeballs and is a big gaming platform. It was always obvious that they'd make good money from that. Twitter however so far is a backend message passing system, which lots of apps use. I'm really skeptical twitter will ever pull off monetization. Twitter don't get the mindshare or eyeballs. Apps that _use_ twitter do.

At the end of the day though, I think it's a matter of taste, and what you're most comfortable. As you say, different aims. I'm very much more comfortable with the European way of building companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is so much bubble hype in SV though. iPad? Yeah most people don't have one, won't get one. Flipboard? what? why would anyone use that? They won't. But investors will invest in it, journalists will lap it up, and some silly media company desperate not to die will probably buy it. Few years on they'll figure it doesn't make any money, and sell it back to the founders for 1/10th what they paid for it... The circle of life in SV. Everyone is too drunk on the bubble koolaid to notice anything is amiss.

Not a game I'm remotely interested in playing

<comment><USER4> Exactly, Flipboard should be three mates in a loft. I realy can't see how they need $10 million investment.

With That said it is a very nice app.

<comment><USER3> They probably need $10m investment to hype them up, fuel the koolaid so that someone else will invest more or buy them.

Agreed though. There is no way on earth you need $10m to build a simple app these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When it comes to change or innovation, the British are characteristically skeptical and morose. A BBC reporter even wrote about the issue last week: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10665372> \- The negative spirit in the UK is palpable after spending an extended period of time in the US.

<comment><USER3> We're realists. Yes totally - UK investors wouldn't plough millions into twitter but IMHO that's a very good thing.

I really don't see any negativity in the UK. Whenever I spend time in the US it just gets a bit much for me. The hype and endless over enthusiasm is a little sickly after a while. And at the end of the day, why do you need that sort of thing? It's absolutely no help whatsoever to be told you're awesome and that your idea is great all the time. I'd much prefer to be told that it sucks and won't work, but perhaps that is a difference in culture.

In the UK we as a culture are built on self deprecating humour, witty put downs. Sarcasm is extremely important to us. This is how we work. Perhaps some see it as negativity, but that's not the case.

Not to get into a war here, but there are lots of things the UK does far better than the US - telco, communication, transport, as well as (IMHO, subjective) quality of life.

<comment><USER5> _We're realists. Yes totally - UK investors wouldn't plough millions into twitter but IMHO that's a very good thing._

I dread to imagine how dull the modern Web would be if America hadn't gotten on board. Britain's contributions to the social Web have been paltry (taking the population difference into account), and even leading lights like Last.fm and Nick Denton buggered off to the US. Anyone I know who was doing good work and got the opportunity to go to the US, did.

 _The hype and endless over enthusiasm is a little sickly after a while. And at the end of the day, why do you need that sort of thing? It's absolutely no help whatsoever to be told you're awesome and that your idea is great all the time. I'd much prefer to be told that it sucks and won't work, but perhaps that is a difference in culture._

It's entirely a cultural difference. It's the good old British "tall poppy syndrome" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome>

I'll err on the side of preferring over-enthusiasm and undeserved hype to British under-enthusiasm and undeserved snarking and putting other people down any day of the week.

<comment><USER6> > It's entirely a cultural difference. It's the good old British "tall poppy > syndrome"

You think telling a start-up with no revenue, no plans for generating revenue, and no obvious link from their offering to a revenue generation model that they aren't worth a multi-million investment is merely resentment of others' success? That's not so much a cultural difference as living on a different planet. :-)

<comment><USER5> _You think telling a start-up with no revenue, no plans for generating revenue, and no obvious link from their offering to a revenue generation model that they aren't worth a multi-million investment is merely resentment of others' success?_

Twitter was given as an example by the GP poster. Are we still talking about them? If so, it might not be resentment but it'd be a flat out lie. If Twitter were not worth investing in, they would not have been invested in. Several of the world's biggest VCs have not gone collectively crazy.

<comment><USER3> You're missing the point here.

Twitter are _NOT_ worth investing from if you take them in isolation. If you're investing in companies because you believe they will become big profitable companies then Twitter as an investment is quite absurd.

The only reason they _ARE_ worth investing in is because collectively investors and would be acquirers believe they are.

Definitely investing in Twitter is a good bet because they'll likely get bought by some silly bigco.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. It's mostly just a glorified pyramid scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> U.K. Enterpreneurs need to travel to the U.S. to promote their products. I'm not sure how valid the comparison to flipboard is, since founder sold his last business for $800m which is some advantage in it's self.

<comment><USER6> > U.K. Enterpreneurs need to travel to the U.S. to promote their products.

That's a mighty bold claim. The US tends to be a significant market for a lot of products just because of its scale, but not every start-up is aimed at a culture or market that is big in the US. Even for mass-market products, Europe's combined population is well over double that of the US. There are things like Asian markets and developing economies to consider as well, where the population is huge and/or relatively wealthy and/or more interested in certain kinds of product.

<comment><USER7> Yes, the reason I was saying that is that many of influential bloggers and companies are in the states and meeting them in person is best way to get their attention. In Europe, since there are so many different languages it seems many people read the English language blogs. I would say the natural other market for U.K. companies would be the U.S. to similar the culture and language.

However, that's not for everyone if you are targeting Asian markets you need to at least visit there.

<comment><USER6> > Yes, the reason I was saying that is that many of influential bloggers and > companies are in the states and meeting them in person is best way to get > their attention.

I respectfully suggest that you are _vastly_ overestimating the importance of "influential bloggers".

<comment><USER7> Probably, though original story was about an application that got a lot of press from those people.

Personally I've had the majority of my traffic from bloggers, though I haven't yet travelled to the U.S. to get more. Several of the successful U.K. businesses travel to U.S. regularly, though I'm not sure if that is cause or effect.

YMMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is anyone here a member of TechHub that's mentioned in the article? - <http://www.techhub.com/about.html>. Is it any good?

<comment><USER9> Techhub has the backing (and involvement) of Mike Butcher, who is the local techcrunch editor - so it's getting a bit of press. Venues like that are great start for the ecosystem, but it's just a for-profit coworking space.

I think the London startup scene is a vibrant from some angles, and extremely dull from others - it's a strange place.</comment></comment>


It is amazing anything works at all. A rant on software development - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/923392376592392197 <comment><USER2> This is the second "twitter blog post" I've seen in a week. And by that I mean 10+ consecutive tweets. Talk about bad UX.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a word for it? If not we will soon need it. There are many such long tweet sequences I have seen, some by journalists. So it's becoming a common thing like web logs -> blogs two decades ago.

<comment><USER3> I thought there was some site that took twitter streams like this and turned them back into text. In the current scheme, where your eye can't simply flow through the text, makes them unreadable and useless to me, so I no longer even try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not all software development is like this. In some sectors it's treated as a proper engineering discipline. Circles where javascript, node and logging into Twitter are a thing are where you find this casual indifference to documentation, garbage interfaces, dozens of competing APIs and so forth. The reason is straightforward: in these areas the problems are neither interesting nor that hard, and so developers get bored and invent complexity where it need not exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have seen the same incomplete and inconsistent documentation for many Google and Microsoft projects including Kubernetes and many cloud based services. And it is not only about their REST APIs but for their SDKs for programming languages/frameworks not limited to Javascript/Node.

<comment><USER5> Why would it be different for Google or Microsoft projects?

I think sidlls was talking about industries where lives are at stake, like aviation , where things move slowely and follow a strict QA process. There you have formally verified systems and the like, but you also have to make tradeoffs like working with a limited subset of C because that is formally verifiable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree on that part. I wanted to highlight that at least the bigcos should provide consistent and comprehensive documentation for their popular libraries/APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization."

\- Gerald Weinberg

<comment><USER7> Unlike houses, software has a very organic nature to it. Requirements are constantly shifting.

<comment><USER8> It's certainly true that the best software I ever worked on didn't suffer shifting requirements.

The customer literally never reported a single bug.

Every requirement was fully tested and fully traceable from requirements document to the exact page of the design document that was going to meet it to the exact lines of code that met it to the module level tests that tested that code to the verification test that tested the requirement at a higher level.

The documentation was beautiful; a document that compiled into two other documents, one being the source code and one being an interlaced design and discussion document with source code in it - one could read this document, read the design, see linked requirements documents, see linked test documents, read the explanations and justifications, interspersed with the source code that then implemented that design. Nobody wrote pure code; we wrote interspersed design and discussion and code, which was then reviewed as a whole.

Even though the project ran for a decade, a newcomer could fully understand everything about the code from reading this document. Within a week, a newcomer fully understood, and if they ever saw code they didn't understand, this document would show them what it was trying to achieve, what requirements it was supporting, how it was being tested. It was 100% waterfall, and fantastically high quality. The customer, after suing one of their other contracted suppliers for failure to deliver working software over a period of years, then came to us to ask if we could make that software too. The high- quality of the work meant that we actually spent less; once designs were approved following review, they were very rarely revisited or changed. Once code was written that met that design, it very rarely needed reworking. Large pieces of the software were written once, correctly, and five years later were still working, exactly as they had been written. When you know what you're supposed to be making in advance, the level of quality you can reach and the low cost of doing it can be astounding.

It all relied on a very high quality of customer without shifting requirements. Sad but true; high quality customers are in very short supply.

I frequently find myself saying at my current workplace "If you don't know what you're meant to be making, the odds of getting it right are very slim." It seems incredible that I have to say it, but I do, and we frequently start making things without a clear picture of what it's meant to be. Still, if customers can't decide what they want, they pay the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like modern js for frontend work, but this is why I like statically typed languages on the backend for anything critical or complicated. Even if the documentation for a library is out of date or for a different version, IDE autocompletion allows you to figure things out on your own. Not just when type hints were provided, but in every case.</comment>


Pupil Invisible: eye tracking glasses powered by deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://pupil-labs.com/blog/2019-01/pupil-invisible-beta-launch/ <comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to leave any questions here :D</comment>


State of Data This Year - 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://doctordata.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/state-of-data-this-year-2011/

<comment><USER2> this is very helpful, thanks for sharing...would love to hear what some of your favorite examples of data journalism were this year? investigative reports, infographics, interactive features...anything.</comment>


Startup engineering team for sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.acquihire.me

<comment><USER2> 19 person years? Just say 2 years jeeze. Or is it that some of you have been together 3 and some joined late. Omg why did you do this to me. Its too early for this.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean?... Can you please elaborate.

<comment><USER2> It was confusing and made me think. They're trying to use how long they've been working together (gel-time) as a sale point. But they say it in a way that it is incredibly vague.

In perhaps better words, it confused me, thought I'd share, doesn't really mean anything unless you like reading into things of trivial importance. :)

<comment><USER4> Something like "20 combined years of experience" would sound better imo.

<comment><USER2> Thats even worse o.O

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Guys, a bit misleading - On your site, I was expecting to see example/s of products with engaged users that you've built together.

Perhaps 'hire.me' would've been a more apt domain name as acquihire implies there's a company with a product to be acquired.

<comment><USER6> The domain is acquihire.me not acquire.me

In silicon valley parlance, here's what it means to be "acquihired": [http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/09/25/161573...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/09/25/161573307/employee- shopping-acqui-hire-is-the-new-normal-in-silicon-valley)</comment></comment>


Ewww, You Use PHP? (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mailchimp.com/ewww-you-use-php/ <comment><USER3> It's not that PHP (or virtually any other non-purposefully-arcane/obscene language) is inherently "terrible", it's just that the syntax, organization, standard library, and most of all mainstream community do not encourage well written, well architected, well "conventioned" systems.

Because PHP really is so trivial to cut and paste, and will often "just work" (as in, be interpreted w/o syntax errors and produce some output), the vast majority of PHP code actually out there in the wild is absolutely terrible and leads to an insane number of vulnerabilities on the Internet, not to mention complacent developers who do not really understand how/why their code is working.

Obviously it's POSSIBLE to write excellent, performant, secure PHP code - <USER2> Facebook and, presumably, Mailchimp - it's just that virtually everything in the PHP ecosystem is fighting against you.

While I suppose Laravel and co are trying to reverse this trend, they just aren't what the "average PHP developer" is actually using - the median PHP developer is almost certainly copy pasting snippets from Stack Overflow into their hobbled-together Wordpress theme.

</comment><comment><USER4> Even though PHP was the first programming language I learned, I feel the same way about it. Like, OMG, totally gross!

Mind you, this position isn't due to any logical or rational reason. I've recently had the opportunity to take a deep dive into Laravel after a long hiatus from PHP. It's come a long way. I simply find the preponderance of '$' characters in the code to be visually and aesthetically unpleasant. Every time I look at PHP code, I literally feel like my eyes are being assaulted.

<comment><USER5> So do you feel the same about Perl?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> (2010)

<comment><USER7> I reckon that article from mailchimp. Would like to hear whats their view now

<comment><USER8> That blog website, based on the comment in the source, is clearly Wordpress.

The rest of the interface still looks like PHP - there are PHPSESSDATA cookies used throughout.

Note their 2014 update:

And yes, we still use PHP.</comment></comment></comment>


My Advice to Fox & MySpace on Selling Content – Yes You Can - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2009/08/08/my-advice-to-fox-myspace-on-selling-content-yes-you-can/ <comment><USER2> The maverick is starting to sound like a disconnected old coot.

Cutting off access to aggregators - Mark feels that this somehow makes the content more valuable and convince readers to come directly to the site. Bullshit. If a site blocks access to a particular news story for an aggregator, the aggregator will simply link to another site that has another article on that same news story (Breaking news? more like leaking news. It takes a grand total of about 2 min for someone else to write up the same story).

The whole point of staying on top of aggregators is that when readers follow a link from an aggregator, they will stick around and go deeper into the site - _thats_ where money can be made. Instead, if they let the aggregators link to other sites, they just took another giant leap towards extinction.

John Gruber said it best - the way for newspapers to make money is to cut the bloat. _As opposed to the current model where the editorial staff makes up only a fraction of the total head count at major newspaper and magazine companies, they should become lean and mean organizations with little or no management bureaucracy. Operations where nearly every employee is working on producing actual content._ Gruber cites the example of Talking Points Memo (which is profitable and hiring) and I wholeheartedly agree.

Welcome the aggregators to link to you. Keep your organisation wire tight. Those are the first 2 steps newspapers should be taking.

P.S. Reuters has the right idea - [http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/08/04/why-i- believe-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/08/04/why-i-believe-in- the-link-economy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> My advice: sell your content, but not to the people who'll read it.

That's what newspapers have been doing for years -- the price you pay at the newsstand is nowhere _close_ to covering what it costs to produce the actual bundle of printed paper you get. The problem, of course, is that too many companies still think they have to produce and distribute a printed bundle of paper, and so are getting their clocks cleaned by people who don't have all that overhead.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a feeling journalism will improve dramatically when people start paying for it.</comment>


If the internet is addictive, why don't we regulate it? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it <comment><USER2> In the US, I think there's a pretty strong First Amendment case against regulating the actual "engagement" mechanisms as the author suggests. That's assuming we could even come up with a sensible and effective set of regulations in the first place.

It also seems weird to me that the author describes how advertising has shaped this architecture, and then suggests that we tweak things at the browser and website level, leaving the advertisers alone. Shouldn't there also be a discussion about what ad networks are allowed to do in terms of the collection, retention, security, (de)anonymization, and sale of user data? How about punitive damages for networks that distribute ads with malware? Maybe if we didn't let that sector run wild, it would have less influence over website design.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haven't read the entire article yet, but some interesting points on this topic were brought up by evgeny morozov in this talk "come and forget": [https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/53642/come-and-forget- with-e...](https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/53642/come-and-forget-with-evgeny- morozov)

[https://youtu.be/f1yJ8eeI2js](https://youtu.be/f1yJ8eeI2js)

Skip about 28 minutes through for the internet parts. He largely encourages us to open our minds beyond the good vs. evil thoughts on net neutrality and cites earlier efforts of bringing computing in a more intentional way (e.g. France's minitel)

</comment><comment> phoe-krk This title is very dangerous, since it implies that it's the Internet that needs to be regulated and not the toxic enterprises that use it. It's like regulating breathing in a classroom because some guy keeps on farting in it.

Internet by itself is not addictive; enterprises that abuse their users are. They have to work like this, since their profit depends on how much attention they can steal and therefore how many advertisements they can display and how much data they can gather to further process and sell.

<comment><USER4> At some point, the addicts themselves have to be addressed. Sure, pushers are contributing to the problem. But internet addiction was a thing before the pushers found the internet. In fact, the first Internet Addiction diagnosis was made at my local University Hospital about 20 years ago (I knew the doctor).

<comment> phoe-krk They have a high chance of not being addicted to the Internet, but addicted in general. The main question isn't what addicts are escaping _into_ but what they are escaping _from_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the air is addictive, why don't we regulate it?

<comment><USER6> We will win the War on Exercise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Ruby/Rails over? - <AUTHOR> With even the coding bootcamps having mostly moved on from Ruby/Rails, is it still worthwhile today to begin a project in Rails or to learn Rails as a beginning developer? <comment><USER2> Depends whether one's interest in Rails[1] was because it was growing quickly and getting a lot of attention, or because it made developing Web apps quicker and much more enjoyable.

The former is over. The era when a "Rails shop" (consultant) could grow quickly - often by delivering brand new apps to customers who asked for Rails by name - ended years ago. I don't think there's a current equivalent to this. For a few years, the interest in mobile apps was about as high as Rails had been, but that's past too. (It's not a language or framework, but… I think containers/Docker has had this spot for the last 1-2 years.)

The latter is still true. Rails is still remarkably efficient in developer time. Moreover, a developer who enjoyed writing Ruby 5 or 10 years ago will probably enjoy it even more now. Of course, other languages and frameworks have also improved[2], but Rails is still competitive by these measures.

One thing that has changed from "peak Rails": the importance of JavaScript and client-side, well, everything. For about 2 years, choosing a JS-centric stack often led to using Node. Since 2015 or so, I think server-independent frameworks (React) and languages (TypeScript) made other server frameworks competitive again.

[1]: or Ruby, but not many people were attracted to Ruby for this reason

[2]: Node gets a lot of attention as a "Rails competitor," but I think someone considering Rails for developer productivity and happiness would probably consider Python (Django) and more recently, Crystal (Lucky or Kemal) before Node.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rails doesn't get as much attention than it used to, but it remains a fantastic framework, that kept adapting to new technologies over time.

More importantly, it remains one of the best, if not the best framework to get things done in a minimum amount of time.

As long as I love Angular, React and Vue for the front-end, I think that Javascript is a fragile and ugly mess for writing backends.

If speed is not a major concern, using Rails for the backend is a great alternative, that works really well.

Rails 5.2 is round the corner and brings exciting new features such as ActiveStorage.

Rails is not the new fad, but it's still something solid you can rely on, and that will automatically apply some of the best practices for you. This is especially important for new developers.

Also, as a new developer, Rails conventions forces you to structure your project in a specific way. Which can be annoying at first, but this will eventually help you understand how to structure all your projects in a clean and consistent way, in all programming languages.

The same can be said for other frameworks, but Rails remains one of the most comprehensive one, while touching all possible areas of application development.

Also, as a beginning developer, you want to have fun. Enjoy what you do. Type 2 lines of code and immediately see the difference. Quickly build applications that do what you had in mind. The last thing you want is fight with tools, dependencies and random breakages.

And Rails delivers that.

<comment><USER4> I'd say that if programmer efficiency is a concern, then Rails is a fantastic solution.

If one is more concerned with server speed, then maybe Elixir/Phoenix could be a better solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's better than ever, especially with 5.2 right around the corner.

While I do know other frameworks (Flask) and am currently learning Elixir/Phoenix, I often still use Rails because I'm a big fan of picking the right tool for the job.

You should listen to this podcast from DHH which came out yesterday:

[https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/rr-342-rails-development- davi...](https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/rr-342-rails-development-david- heinemeier-hansson)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think that an opinionated framework like Rails will be around for a long time.

Technology has its fads, but somethings stick around. There are plenty of people still coding in C. Laravel is a pretty big PHP framework.

There are plenty of companies that built on Rails. The cost of switching to a new technology is likely unfeasible. So likely the product/company will continue to use Rails.

So if you like Ruby/Rails, I say go for it!

<comment><USER7> > There are plenty of people still coding in C.

Of course, as there is no real-world alternative to C for some applications. The famous Linus Torvalds rant on C++ still rings true today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That ship has sailed. Catch the next one.

<comment><USER9> In what way has the Ruby on Rails ship sailed? It is still extremely viable, and there are significant new features being added all the time.

<comment><USER8> I 100% agree but you have a much bigger chance of landing new job with React, Go and friends.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Posterous Intercepts? - <AUTHOR>

This is going to sound crazy, but every now and then when I click on a link in HN I end up over on posterous. The other times I thought perhaps they were posterous articles, but the last two times I've double-checked and they're articles from somewhere else on the net. Somehow instead of going to the link target, I'm whisked away to a posterous sign-up page.<p>Anybody else getting this behavior? <comment><USER2> Weird. Is this still happening? Let us know email@example.com</comment>


The Parents Are Not All Right - <AUTHOR> https://gen.medium.com/parents-are-not-ok-66ab2a3e42d9 <comment><USER2> I actually disagree with this part: "The particular struggle reflects the most privileged perspective — that of two fully employed adults, sharing the burden, without fear of losing our jobs."

While this is hardly an unenviable position, and may be better off than most, I don't think two people who need to work full time represents the most "privileged" position. In this case, a family with a stable and sufficient income from a single primary earner, with the other free to handle the sudden increase in demands of child care, really would be a better position.

"But it's precisely the privilege of this vantage point that in a way makes it so stark. This is the best-case scenario?"

No, this isn't the best case scenario. It's hardly the worst, but the difficulties here are absolutely the result of the two income trap. I don't know their exact situation, but plenty of middle class people would face eviction or foreclosure within 6-12 months, maybe less, if either spouse lost their job and couldn't find another. There isn't much wiggle room left.

<comment><USER3> I'm Fortunately in this position. My spouse is on full time should care. We're not wealthy but I make enough that we can live happily this way and our choice is that this is worth the reduction in income from my spouse working outside the house.

Even so, this is REALLY hard. I can't even comprehend the feelings of those less fortunate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is well put. But of course it will end, and us privileged few will go back to our regular routines and our babysitters will return to work and take care of our kids after school and we'll adjust and the kids will be fine.

The longer it goes on, the more chance there is that this novel pain shared by us lucky few will motivate some structural changes that will make life more bearable for the less privileged people for whom these kinds of tensions and juggling are nothing new.

But... I doubt it. Nothing is working. My wife's 12 person company is struggling, and will probably fail, to get a PPP loan for utterly moronic procedural reasons and saturation of the system. Extended unemployment benefits seem to have been calculated to run out around the time that the average person will be able to file a claim. Businesses are evaporating everywhere, completely undermining the bedrock of the economy. There is no sense of anything from government (any part of it) other than getting back to business as usual - why? So we can do this again in the fall? In a few years' time when another displaced wild animal spits on a market trader?

Couldn't two trillion dollars - not even a once per generation level of expenditure - have been more effectively employed to build some resilience in the system?

The city is sacked by barbarians; they leave, and the survivors hold a feast instead of building a wall.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be easier if families stopped the rat race and stopped sending two parents to careers. career minded people could pair up with home-minded people instead of striving for dual incomes. In good times those home minded people could use their free time to be pillars of the community.

<comment><USER6> Good luck paying for a family on a single income. What planet do you live on?

<comment><USER7> It's doable. Wife and I have done it for literally 23 years. With 4 kids.

Granted, after year 3 (and kid 2) I was making entry level developer money, but here in the south 18 years ago that was a long way from FU money. We made sacrifices and decided that some things were more important than others. Our vacations were camp outs, our four kids wore secondhand (and third/fourth hand) clothes. I bought (and still buy) most of my clothes from Goodwill or Walmart. We have never had the newest anything. There was a period of about two years where we were a single car family.

It's doable. You will have to lower your standard of consumption, probably a lot, but in our case it was totally the better choice. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Leaving work for childcare is currently a valid reason to go on unemployment. They should try to work this out with one of their employers. They could each go down to 50% time and pay and be supplemented by unemployment currently. There is a lot of flexibility they aren't taking advantage of and then complaining about how hard it is.

<comment><USER2> Their jobs may be important, though. It's a privilege to have a stable and meaningful job, but it's also important to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just like the supply chain the family structure has shifted to a a just in time no margin system with child care outsourced to the most efficient location. When the childcare system gets taken offline there isn't enough capacity to handle work and childcare and rent something is going to get dropped

</comment><comment><USER10> Article is spot on. After a few weeks we broke quarenteen and flew to stay with the grandparents. We are lucky the grandparents are youngish and able to help.

</comment><comment><USER11> The absolute narcissism of people like this amazes me.

Other people must subside her lifestyle, because?

<comment><USER12> Issues like lack of health insurance, lack of sick and parental leave, and the school day ending at 3pm when work ends at 5 or 6pm are common problems that many families deal with on a daily basis. These are a result of policy choices. It affects single people (single people get sick too), families with 2 working adults (not all jobs have health insurance, who can take early off of work everyday to pick up the kids, one adult may require care taking at some point in their life), families with 1 working adult (if the insurance provider loses their job that can jeapordize health insurance for the entire family).

I don't see how discussing these issues is "narcissistic". Aligning the school day with typical work hours seems like a reasonable policy change and ensuring the people can afford healthcare aren't just whimsical lifestyle choices.</comment></comment>


Aurelius has been acquired by DataStax - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/aureliusgraphs/c07WEdH-epY <comment><USER2> That's sad. I was a big fan of Titan DB and we use it extensively.

Really sad to see it go. Now we'll have to find another solution, e.g. migrate to Neo4j, although we rely heavily on the scalability of Titan DB.

I guess now is the time to test Neo4j's cluster performance.

Any other alternatives out there?

<comment><USER3> Why is this so bad for Titan? Datastax seems to have helped Cassandra a bunch.

I haven't tested neo4j's clustering because you have to pay to use it. Was actually hoping to switch to Titan.

<comment><USER4> From TFA: "However, there is also some sadness in this announcement. As we transition to DataStax, we will find little time to contribute to Titan and interact with the Titan community. We will miss that and hope that it will be carried forward."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The move seems like a good fit both ways.

Just started evaluating Titan DB for a use case and would love to hear any comments from anyone with experience.

<comment><USER6> Titan is dead:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/aureliusgraphs/c07WE...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/aureliusgraphs/c07WEdH- epY)

<comment><USER7> What is the purpose of acquiring the team if the project is not going to continue? Is the idea that the core cassandra database will add graphs as a datatype?

<comment><USER5> I think the handwriting is on the wall:

> However, there is also some sadness in this announcement. As we transition > to DataStax, we will find little time to contribute to Titan and interact > with the Titan community. We will miss that and hope that it will be carried > forward.

From that link it sounds like they're going to work on more tightly integrating inside of Cassandra. Which is a nice idea ... except that we have to wait for it.

<comment><USER6> > Which is a nice idea ... except that we have to wait for it.

And that it will be in the DataStax proprietary solution</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>