As an English speaker, DuoLingo didn’t seem that interesting to me. Then I listened to a podcast where the found Luis von Ahn explained why he started the compa

As an English speaker, DuoLingo didn’t seem that interesting to me. Then I listened to a podcast where the found Luis von Ahn explained why he started the company [1]. He grew up in Guatemala, and he noticed that learning English would essentially triple anyone’s earning potential in his country. Sure, I might never learn Chinese in DuoLingo, but if I could triple my income by doing it I bet I’d be much more motivated. English speakers that think this app is a toy aren’t the target market. Luis also invented the captcha and used it to digitize the full archive of the New York Times. I can’t speak to the quality of the instruction in DuoLingo, but I’m willing to bet that if there’s a computer-assisted approach to language learning that works, Luis is one of the people most likely to invent it. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duolingo-luis-von-ahn https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duoli...