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.

I don't think there is anything comparable OSS wise. Creating such an alternative wouldn't only be very difficutl tech-wise, but someone would also have to create the content.

Anyway, I've been using Duolingo since ca. 2014 and it didn't shutdown... Plus, it's free - what do you have to lose? Your progress on some language learning app? You won't lose the knowledge gained.

It isn't free -- you have to watch ads, which detracts severely from the learning and enjoyment.

Plus being a betrayal of their user-base which is heavily weighted towards young and impressionable learners. And, by the way, a betrayal of their initial promise, that they would never do advertising (expressly stated in the first promo video they released, which is still on YouTube).

What you have to lose is your time spend. At least you'll lose time due to the gamification and the ads.

Anki is useful for spaced repetition, but setting up a deck is going to take effort and requires knowledge (building a deck is useful by itself though).

https://tatoeba.org/eng/ is a partial solution to the problem that someone has to create the content.

You ever hear of a thing called opportunity cost? Some people interested in learning a foreign language actually have a compelling desire to learn said language.

> Creating such an alternative wouldn't only be very difficutl tech-wise

I am quite curious how you figure this. Other than analytics and tracking, Duolingo doesn’t even require a backend.

On the contrary, Wouldn't you want to use something so that it could save their day especially theirs being an "incredible journey"?

Very wise. You can see the level of VC control in the company and how they are only continuing to increase their influence as they head towards the IPO. The VC funders want their monetization payout. It's somewhat alarming considering the userbase is mostly teenagers - and younger.