150 Day Streak in Duolingo
Génial! I have a 150 day French learning streak on Duolingo!
I'm going to Roubaix, France for a week in February next year. I will attend a one week framebuilding course arranged by LaFraise Cycles.
I started preparing for the course already last spring. I started making frame sketches in BikeCAD and in the summer I decided to give Duolingo a try and started studying French. I didn't realise I would like learning a new language so much!
It's been ages since I've studied a new language and I just love it! I had totally forgotten how much fun languages are. Learning languages has always been quite easy for me and I've always enjoyed it. Starting a new language from scratch seems to get easier and easier the more languages you already know. There are always some language constructs, vocabulary or just word order that might feel familiar from some other language.
Learning Gamification
Duolingo is famous for the gamification they've done. It's really an art form in itself.
Usually, I don't like gamification and I hate leaderboards, but in this case I think it works. The way Duolingo nudges you to take a little bit of time twice a day for learning seems very effective - both from the gamification and learning perspective. The whole learning process is clearly designed for the modern mobile age. At least for me this works.
Traditional language courses would have me studying a few hours a week (plus homework), but I think that Duolingo's approach is more effective. Repetition is the name of the game with languages.
Learning new Programming Languages
Learning a new languege got me thinking about learning new programming languages. I master only a few languages but I enjoy trying new ones every now and then. I think something always carries over to your preferred language when you get back. For example, I tried a little bit of Clojure and immediately I wanted to try some functional programming principles in JavaScript and PHP.
In programming it's always good to broaden your horizons and try out new things. There's always more than one way to accomplish something and trying out a new language might give you a new perspective.