Your point is a good one, although I have to point out that Duolingo does at least let you skip through the gamified stuff very quickly. When I'm doing lessons

Your point is a good one, although I have to point out that Duolingo does at least let you skip through the gamified stuff very quickly. When I'm doing lessons I reflexively double tap the "Ok" button to skip over the little whoo-hoo animation. It would be awful if I was forced to wait for the animation to complete, which fortunately, they do not. The same applies to basically all the animations except for the opening screen.