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Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a social network app 5) I'm bored partying with my new friends, I'm going to level up and build an app to learn a new language 6) I'm lonely, I'm going to build a dating app to find a mate 7) I found a mate and the whole engagement/wedding industry is a fraud, I'm going to make an app to make it easier to navigate 8) My children are awesome, I'm going to build apps to manage their time/friends/eating/sleeping/learning 9) Technology is a waste of time, I'm going to spend my time on other hobbies and my family 10) I've been working 20 years in a boring industry and I see an opportunity to write boring software that solves boring problems that businesses will actually pay for. Jackpot. Edit: As others pointed out, should have included: ToDo app, Blog App, and a travel app. Travel should probably be 5 with language at 6.

bcherny 9y ago
Wow, this is remarkably accurate..
Swinx43 9y ago
Absolutely love it!
bpicolo 9y ago
Don't forget static blog engines
- theDoug 9y ago
  You gotta support that Markdown or else you're nothin'!
- newsbinator 9y ago
  Here's a new JS framework that's exactly like Vue, but with much less functionality, making it faster to learn.
  - da02 9y ago
    I'm guilty of this. Hopefully, the experience will teach me a few things. Like how some actors have to get their bad acting years out of their system to move to the next level.
loarabia 9y ago
That's awesome. It just seems to need a todo app sprinkled in somewhere. Maybe somewhere around 1st job?
miguelrochefort 9y ago
This is a tragedy. Why do people keep reinventing the wheel like that? Why don't we just have one system/app that does everything (buy/sell books, find roommates, cost splitting, etc.)? Hopefully what I'm suggested is not step 11: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
the_af 9y ago
Excellent. You forgot that each step must be announced on HN with a title like "Walking my dog was hard. So I wrote this app."
newusertoday 9y ago
while i enjoyed the rant ;-) please also share the list of boring problems that business will actually pay for..
- xeromal 9y ago
  Build them a website, an API, and a couple of services.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
You say this snarkily, but I don’t see what is wrong with someone growing up and wanting to try to use coding to solve problems relevant to their stage of life. It turns out some problems are complex, but so what? I’ve been working on “programming interfaces for beginners” for 12 years and still haven’t succeeded. That’s not because I’m dumb, nor is everyone who thought it would be easy and failed. It’s because there are building blocks that don’t exist yet, so when you try to make the thing you end up getting distracted making a building block—or eight—and then your schedule gets shot and this kills the project. But there’s no shame in that. If we’re lucky, you made a new building block which will eventually mature, in one form or another, maybe just in conversations with other devs who are closer to cracking that low level problem. And then guess what... time is ripe for a hubristic person, young or old, to step up and try their hand at your original problem, now with one more building block. There’s now a 5% higher chance of success. Eventually someone will hit a threshold. Is your post meant to be more than classic HN stop energy?
- djb_hackernews 9y ago
  Not meant to be snarky at all. Though I do wish my comment wasn't the top voted one. People, please upvote the other on topic comments or have the mods bury it. FWIW this is basically my path. I've done pretty much all of them to some degree and a few in earnest. In fact I'm working on my own language learning "tool" while I wait around for #10.
  - avn2109 9y ago
    Any discussion of computerized language learning is woefully incomplete without a mention of [0], which has an interesting combination of properties. It is: * A) run by people who suck at SEO and marketing * B) technologically and graphic-design wise really janky * C) harder and less fun than e.g. Duolingo * and D) drastically, overwhelmingly more effective than every other system I've ever seen at actually teaching you a language (for people with almost all common linguistic-cognition neurotypes aka nearly everyone) The first 3 attributes mean that almost nobody has heard of it/uses it. The downside is that for most languages they didn't build out enough curriculum to get you to fluency. It'll take you roughly a third of the way there. I'm building an open source clone (with longer curriculum) for the other two thirds of the way. Also, L101 should be paired with Yabla, which will train the skill of listening-and-understanding in your target language. I'm not affiliated with [0] in any way other than by being a happy customer and by the fact that I'm writing an open source clone of their stuff. [0] https://language101.com/ https://language101.com/
slaymaker1907 9y ago
You alao missed dog walking app. I'm pretty sure there has been some variation on that for the past 3 years as a senior project at my university.
avip 9y ago
Could you add expected stage half-life? I'm stack @8 and would like to advance to 9 ASAP.
- schacon 9y ago
  Yes, getting a better overview of what your progress and work left to do in each level is on our short list. For now, you can always contact us with the Intercom button in the bottom right if you have issues like this and we can see if something is weird or manually advance you. Thanks!
panglott 9y ago
Learning a language (or any skill) will always take a lot of personal work and commitment. But this is a problem where we need better tools and solutions, even as our tools and solutions have been improving rapidly. More people trying to innovate in this space will only improve them further. Look, 100 years ago we only had dry books with conjugation tables for mostly classical and European languages. Most of the world's languages were barely described, we barely had adequate tools to describe them, and most policy was bent on eradicating them. Move forward to the mid-20th century, and we learning tools like the FSI courses and Pimsleur courses, which are at least getting decent audio out there. Then the Internet occurred, which has completely transformed our ability to access authentic spoken and written material in major target languages. Online dictionaries and apps are better than ever. You can look up a page in Wikipedia and see the target language version, which reveals so much more than a dictionary can. Machine translation helps you see how words are strung together. Now we have Duolingo and things like Anki and Tofugu.com, which of course do not take you all the way, but are still a huge improvement over the tools we had before. Even better is coming.
yannick 9y ago
you forgot laundry. Mom doesn't do my laundry anymore; doing laundry sucks; the world desperately needs an uber-for-laundry app.

bcherny 9y ago

Wow, this is remarkably accurate..

Swinx43 9y ago

Absolutely love it!

bpicolo 9y ago

Don't forget static blog engines

theDoug 9y ago
You gotta support that Markdown or else you're nothin'!
newsbinator 9y ago
Here's a new JS framework that's exactly like Vue, but with much less functionality, making it faster to learn.
- da02 9y ago
  I'm guilty of this. Hopefully, the experience will teach me a few things. Like how some actors have to get their bad acting years out of their system to move to the next level.

loarabia 9y ago

That's awesome. It just seems to need a todo app sprinkled in somewhere. Maybe somewhere around 1st job?

miguelrochefort 9y ago

This is a tragedy. Why do people keep reinventing the wheel like that? Why don't we just have one system/app that does everything (buy/sell books, find roommates, cost splitting, etc.)? Hopefully what I'm suggested is not step 11: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

the_af 9y ago

Excellent. You forgot that each step must be announced on HN with a title like "Walking my dog was hard. So I wrote this app."

newusertoday 9y ago

while i enjoyed the rant ;-) please also share the list of boring problems that business will actually pay for..

xeromal 9y ago
Build them a website, an API, and a couple of services.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

You say this snarkily, but I don’t see what is wrong with someone growing up and wanting to try to use coding to solve problems relevant to their stage of life. It turns out some problems are complex, but so what? I’ve been working on “programming interfaces for beginners” for 12 years and still haven’t succeeded. That’s not because I’m dumb, nor is everyone who thought it would be easy and failed. It’s because there are building blocks that don’t exist yet, so when you try to make the thing you end up getting distracted making a building block—or eight—and then your schedule gets shot and this kills the project. But there’s no shame in that. If we’re lucky, you made a new building block which will eventually mature, in one form or another, maybe just in conversations with other devs who are closer to cracking that low level problem. And then guess what... time is ripe for a hubristic person, young or old, to step up and try their hand at your original problem, now with one more building block. There’s now a 5% higher chance of success. Eventually someone will hit a threshold. Is your post meant to be more than classic HN stop energy?

djb_hackernews 9y ago
Not meant to be snarky at all. Though I do wish my comment wasn't the top voted one. People, please upvote the other on topic comments or have the mods bury it. FWIW this is basically my path. I've done pretty much all of them to some degree and a few in earnest. In fact I'm working on my own language learning "tool" while I wait around for #10.
- avn2109 9y ago
  Any discussion of computerized language learning is woefully incomplete without a mention of [0], which has an interesting combination of properties. It is: * A) run by people who suck at SEO and marketing * B) technologically and graphic-design wise really janky * C) harder and less fun than e.g. Duolingo * and D) drastically, overwhelmingly more effective than every other system I've ever seen at actually teaching you a language (for people with almost all common linguistic-cognition neurotypes aka nearly everyone) The first 3 attributes mean that almost nobody has heard of it/uses it. The downside is that for most languages they didn't build out enough curriculum to get you to fluency. It'll take you roughly a third of the way there. I'm building an open source clone (with longer curriculum) for the other two thirds of the way. Also, L101 should be paired with Yabla, which will train the skill of listening-and-understanding in your target language. I'm not affiliated with [0] in any way other than by being a happy customer and by the fact that I'm writing an open source clone of their stuff. [0] https://language101.com/ https://language101.com/

slaymaker1907 9y ago

You alao missed dog walking app. I'm pretty sure there has been some variation on that for the past 3 years as a senior project at my university.

avip 9y ago

Could you add expected stage half-life? I'm stack @8 and would like to advance to 9 ASAP.

schacon 9y ago
Yes, getting a better overview of what your progress and work left to do in each level is on our short list. For now, you can always contact us with the Intercom button in the bottom right if you have issues like this and we can see if something is weird or manually advance you. Thanks!

panglott 9y ago

Learning a language (or any skill) will always take a lot of personal work and commitment. But this is a problem where we need better tools and solutions, even as our tools and solutions have been improving rapidly. More people trying to innovate in this space will only improve them further. Look, 100 years ago we only had dry books with conjugation tables for mostly classical and European languages. Most of the world's languages were barely described, we barely had adequate tools to describe them, and most policy was bent on eradicating them. Move forward to the mid-20th century, and we learning tools like the FSI courses and Pimsleur courses, which are at least getting decent audio out there. Then the Internet occurred, which has completely transformed our ability to access authentic spoken and written material in major target languages. Online dictionaries and apps are better than ever. You can look up a page in Wikipedia and see the target language version, which reveals so much more than a dictionary can. Machine translation helps you see how words are strung together. Now we have Duolingo and things like Anki and Tofugu.com, which of course do not take you all the way, but are still a huge improvement over the tools we had before. Even better is coming.

yannick 9y ago

you forgot laundry. Mom doesn't do my laundry anymore; doing laundry sucks; the world desperately needs an uber-for-laundry app.