A Few Random Comments on Duolingo
Nov. 20th, 2019 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI have been doing Duo for a while now. Which is fine. There have been changes in the way it works. Also fine.
Recently, they have added a Stories feature, which delivers a ludicrous number of points for almost no work at all. It is not currently available in Dutch, but is available in Spanish and French. Between noticing that, and noticing that I can test out of the easy stuff and get more points that way, I have basically been avoiding dealing with conditionals in Dutch, which annoy the hell out of me. I could do this for weeks. It would be fine.
Anyway.
As I was poking around, I noticed several things. First, because Stories rack up a lot of points, and because testing out of things racks up points, I have an unusually large number of points this week. Ha ha ha. Duo, you are not very good at this — when I avoid actually learning things, I earn more points. Yeah, that makes no sense at all.
Second, I noticed that because I have been generating more points, I am higher than I usually am in my league table. Also, I have not Achieved the first place in a league achievement. Hmmm. So I thought, okay, I am not really going to put a lot of effort into this, but I will def exploit the Stories and the testing out feature. It helps that I have multiple languages going; the opportunity to test out of lots of things I already know is pretty extensive, and if I start hitting hard things, I can always spin up German, say, and just really start running through stuff. I also noticed that while Duo gives me crap about failure to actually put the punctuation in while typing (which is a massive PITA on my iPad keyboard and unspeakably awful on the iPhone), it does not appear to ding me for it. So I have completely blown off all effort in getting the accents and so forth. Ha ha ha ha. I feel so evil. (Not really; I am actually putting them in in my head as I am typing, I am just not fucking around trying to figure out how to get the keyboard to produce them correctly.)
Anyway, I did this all way too early in the week, so, having put myself on the top of the league table, I now have to maintain it. And it is def bringing out all the worst of my competitive behaviors. Oh well! I keep getting random people deciding to follow me, on Duo, a feature that I have never understood at all, but whatever. There must be some community of people who does crap like this on the regular. I am fine with being a tourist.
Recently, they have added a Stories feature, which delivers a ludicrous number of points for almost no work at all. It is not currently available in Dutch, but is available in Spanish and French. Between noticing that, and noticing that I can test out of the easy stuff and get more points that way, I have basically been avoiding dealing with conditionals in Dutch, which annoy the hell out of me. I could do this for weeks. It would be fine.
Anyway.
As I was poking around, I noticed several things. First, because Stories rack up a lot of points, and because testing out of things racks up points, I have an unusually large number of points this week. Ha ha ha. Duo, you are not very good at this — when I avoid actually learning things, I earn more points. Yeah, that makes no sense at all.
Second, I noticed that because I have been generating more points, I am higher than I usually am in my league table. Also, I have not Achieved the first place in a league achievement. Hmmm. So I thought, okay, I am not really going to put a lot of effort into this, but I will def exploit the Stories and the testing out feature. It helps that I have multiple languages going; the opportunity to test out of lots of things I already know is pretty extensive, and if I start hitting hard things, I can always spin up German, say, and just really start running through stuff. I also noticed that while Duo gives me crap about failure to actually put the punctuation in while typing (which is a massive PITA on my iPad keyboard and unspeakably awful on the iPhone), it does not appear to ding me for it. So I have completely blown off all effort in getting the accents and so forth. Ha ha ha ha. I feel so evil. (Not really; I am actually putting them in in my head as I am typing, I am just not fucking around trying to figure out how to get the keyboard to produce them correctly.)
Anyway, I did this all way too early in the week, so, having put myself on the top of the league table, I now have to maintain it. And it is def bringing out all the worst of my competitive behaviors. Oh well! I keep getting random people deciding to follow me, on Duo, a feature that I have never understood at all, but whatever. There must be some community of people who does crap like this on the regular. I am fine with being a tourist.