I was using duolingo recently for Spanish. Unfortunately, I got dropped into the "hearts" A/B test and it destroyed my experience. Basically you get four heart

I was using duolingo recently for Spanish. Unfortunately, I got dropped into the "hearts" A/B test and it destroyed my experience. Basically you get four hearts every few hours. Every mistake takes away a heart. If you lose all your hearts you can no longer play. But, you can do _review_ lessons (that have nothing to do with the content your currently learning) and regain 2 more hearts. It basically became a grind situation and I stopped using it. I've heard the webapp doesn't use hearts, but I refuse to support them after that. And, yes, I was planning to buy a program to learn Spanish and had been using duolingo for 2 weeks prior to getting the hearts. I did some reading on reddit and it appears this is related to some VC funding and attempt to make money. I understand they need to make money, but this felt like a very bait and switch slap in the face kind of thing. The whole experience kind of soured me on learning for now and I haven't been spending as much time on it since. I did find clozemaster which seems to be a similar, and honestly better, app. I also have a textbook and workbook pair. And, fortunately, have a lot of native Spanish speakers around me.