Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

leejo.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 231 posts

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#201

Post by rjh29 »

rendall wrote: post #163
hermannj314 wrote: post #48

What I noticed from the sobriety community (specifically alcohol), it is important to make promises to yourself 'one day at a a time'. There is a presumed danger to tying too much of your ego to the duration of your sobriety. I am not sure if it is scientifically proven, but if you relapse the assumption is you would rather have a psychology built around making the right choice today and not one built on pride of a l…

I've always wondered, if someone has a drink the week before getting, for example, their 10 year pin, do they not get the pin, or is there some kind of duolingo take-back?

Personally if I drank once or twice within a 10 year period I'd still count it as 10 years sober. There's a big difference between a one-off 'lapse' and a 'relapse'. And I suspect a large number of '10 year sober' people have had the occasional lapse and just don't want to admit it.

Put it another way, is 10 years with a few lapses worth significantly less than 10 years completely sober? Of course not. It's still a huge achievement. So why punish yourself?

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#202

Post by aaron695 »

hermannj314 wrote: post #48

What I noticed from the sobriety community (specifically alcohol), it is important to make promises to yourself 'one day at a a time'. There is a presumed danger to tying too much of your ego to the duration of your sobriety. I am not sure if it is scientifically proven, but if you relapse the assumption is you would rather have a psychology built around making the right choice today and not one built on pride of a l…

Chips are the opposite to this theory.

You need both.

The ability to not lose it all because of a break.

But also a reason not to have a break.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#203

Post by rjh29 »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #88
atlas_shrugged wrote: post #84

Just curious is this 8 year streak for 1 language? What % completion are you for a the language? Do you consider yourself proficient?

Anecdata, but I completed the whole french duolingo tree and kept my whole tree "gold" the whole time, and I still don't feel like I'm proficient in french at all. I thing duolingo can be a good addition to another language learning system, but on its own I think it's next to useless

I'm the same with French. A few years later I recall nothing. I am proficient with Japanese which I learned using traditional methods and lots of reading over a few years. There's no magical easy way to learn a language!

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#204

Post by rmbyrro »

adastra22 wrote: post #168
rmbyrro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's impressive. Non-avid reader before to almost a year of avid reading, then all lost because of a hook metric. This stuff is a real deal.

It can be demotivating. I use other language learning apps (not Duolingo, which is garbage), and I try to maintain a streak not because I care about it, but because I want the daily habit. Nevertheless, the number goes up… and help but get attached to it. I mean I don’t care about the number per se, but it was a reminder of my good study habit, which as someone with ADHD is an accomplishment itself. Then, like GP, I…

> Developers, don’t put streak counters in these sorts of apps.

This definitely deserves a deep discussion. Get to the bottom: is it good, bad, is there a better way to implement?

I can speculate that, for many people, just getting a triple-digit streak is a big win.

Even if they drop for a year, or even forever, after losing it.

They wouldn't have accomplished the feat without the streak metric.

I don't have any data. As I said, it's speculative, but perhaps reasonably possible to be the case?

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#205

Post by adastra22 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #204
adastra22 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be demotivating. I use other language learning apps (not Duolingo, which is garbage), and I try to maintain a streak not because I care about it, but because I want the daily habit. Nevertheless, the number goes up… and help but get attached to it. I mean I don’t care about the number per se, but it was a reminder of my good study habit, which as someone with ADHD is an accomplishment itself. Then, like GP, I…

> Developers, don’t put streak counters in these sorts of apps. This definitely deserves a deep discussion. Get to the bottom: is it good, bad, is there a better way to implement? I can speculate that, for many people, just getting a triple-digit streak is a big win. Even if they drop for a year, or even forever, after losing it. They wouldn't have accomplished the feat without the streak metric. I don't have any dat…

Idk. Data point of me: I’ve kept up with other review apps that don’t have the streak counter longer. But obviously there’s a lot of confounding factors.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#206

Post by zamadatix »

jammu wrote: post #153

I love that Duo streak is hard to lose, unlike other apps where if you miss a day streak is gone. The goal of app is to help you keep learning. In life things are bound to happen because of which you might miss couple of days or more, it make no sense to penalize you for that. I have been trying to maintain streak in other apps but I when I miss a day, I am not motivated enough to go back and start again. Also, strea…

Yeah I remember starting a couple week streak in an app and then I had a long day with a work due to some issues and it reset my streak to 1 day since even though I did it before the end of my day it was technically the morning of the next day. It may have been technically "correct" but not having leniencies made me realize the streak was going to inevitably keep getting broken which made it lose all value to me.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#207

Post by billjings »

rjh29 wrote: post #201
rendall wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered, if someone has a drink the week before getting, for example, their 10 year pin, do they not get the pin, or is there some kind of duolingo take-back?

Personally if I drank once or twice within a 10 year period I'd still count it as 10 years sober. There's a big difference between a one-off 'lapse' and a 'relapse'. And I suspect a large number of '10 year sober' people have had the occasional lapse and just don't want to admit it. Put it another way, is 10 years with a few lapses worth significantly less than 10 years completely sober? Of course not. It's still a h…

Sure, but also: who cares?

If you think it's worth lying about having 10 years, then why bother lying about having 10 years?

In practice, milestones are more for sharing one's experience than for attaining an award. And if you slip up, telling that truth is honestly more helpful for the other person struggling to stay sober than lying to them about having 10 years.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#208

Post by sigstoat »

sireat wrote: post #131

Duolingo must have psychologists on staff who realized the insidious side of the "keeping the streak". One of the happiest days in my life was the day after losing the streak on 750words a few years ago. I had a 500+ day streak going but it had not built into an effortless habit (like a cold shower). Surest way to misery is feeling forced into doing something yet not getting enjoyment nor showing any improvement. I a…

> On the same note I quit Duolingo when I realized that the modicum of German I was learning was quickly overtaken by my teenage daughter. She was in a very average German class spending less time on lessons.

how much german have you learned since quitting?

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#209

Post by jabits »

adastra22 wrote: post #181
dom111 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, what other language learning apps are you using? I'm going to Portugal nest year and learning Portuguese through Duolingo at the moment. It's ok and some stuff is sticking, but I can't help but feel some of the why is missing and I'm just learning how to interpret their questions, rather than learning the language (I guess that's your problem with it?)

The ones I’m using now are specific to Japanese (WaniKani and Bunpro), but if you want to level up from Duolingo I would recommend Memrise for a similar bit more effective experience. They have a Portuguese course. If I were in your shoes, I would do Memrise to fill the little moments throughout the day. But the focus of my studies would be (1) a local community college Portuguese course; (2) the FSI Basic Portuguese…

Idk, I started out using both Memrise and Duolingo in August 2018 for French, used both for a couple of years but now use Duolingo only for French and Italian the last couple of years. I think both are good but prefer Duolingo. But to get conversational I believe you would have to go to more personal methods…

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#210

Post by FalconSensei »

jeremyjh wrote: post #162
jammu wrote: post #153

I love that Duo streak is hard to lose, unlike other apps where if you miss a day streak is gone. The goal of app is to help you keep learning. In life things are bound to happen because of which you might miss couple of days or more, it make no sense to penalize you for that. I have been trying to maintain streak in other apps but I when I miss a day, I am not motivated enough to go back and start again. Also, strea…

But how does the streak motivate you if you know that it is meaningless - and not even really a streak?

It's not meaningless. Just not 'every day'.

Like, when I have to travel to visit my family, it's like 25h of flights and connections + another 2h road trip, and still need to arrive like 4 hours earlier. I'm def. going to be offline and would miss a streak if it required me to do every day. So I would not even try to increase it anyway, since I know it's impossible not to lose it a couple times every year.

Since I know I can go offline for a day or 2 when necessary, I have more motivation to just keep going

Post reply on HN