An opinionated critique of Duolingo

An opinionated critique of Duolingo

Link: https://isomorphism.xyz/blog/2025/duolingo/

Context

Duolingo is a great app. But it is just gamification of user attention. I tried learning Japanese, and I can’t understand the language as a human, as a repeating process it is nice, but no, it doesn’t click I am using it for learning chess, so far it looks good, its like a textbook way of learning things. Nothing personalised or very sophisticated. But the UX is cool, the interaction and user feedback is smooth and top notch. It is a engineering marvel, but not on the human-like-learning path. If it can do that, it is a great app.

Cluade 4.5 is the best coding model in the world? Till when

Cluade 4.5 is the best coding model in the world? Till when

Link: https://youtu.be/uZBjVeyiYkk

Context

Claude 4.5 dropped, maybe its a 0.5x improvement, is it? Maybe but definitely it has reduced its behaviour. That is a good and a bad change. Good because obviously, it should work in friendly way, AI and security right now are two separate circles, bubbles if you will. Bad because now we it doesn’t quite do what it is asked to do, it might avoid the things that are not ethical, but it could have side-effects where it could reject a query which is genuine and not align with its interpretation of ethical.

Computerphile: Machine Code Explained

Computerphile: Machine Code Explained

Link: https://youtu.be/8VsiYWW9r48

Context

I haven’t seen such a simple explanation of Assembly Code and Memory in my life. The comparison of register as memory blocks, pigeon holes as memory units holding volatile memory. I want to read this book . This is such a great visual of how memory and computers work. I think in the age of AI, shallow knowledge is no good, we need depth and low-level details, when vibe code slop fails, real grug brain developer has to roll off his sleeves and dug deeper.

Cursor AI Foundations

#ai 
Preview

A six-part video series on AI foundations, designed for beginners to learn concepts like tokens, context, and agents. Read all chapters, check your knowledge...

Cursor AI Foundations

Link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuI2ZfvGpzwCEXrl_K6bW5OqNpZq3HkMa&si=NmxQoNkfB8-0zCZP

Context

It was refreshing to watch the tool that I use day to day. I don’t like much of its usage. It causes me anxiety. But knowing its capabilities and limitations is not harmful. I like the way it explained, the problems with AI and its sloppiness.

Source: techstructive-weekly-62

Cursor designer builds an OS with cursor

#ai 

Cursor designer builds an OS with cursor

Link: https://youtu.be/TQhv6Wol6Ns

Context

This is wild, I cannot believe this, it was created by AI, half baked but still. I think it takes time to clean up the vibe-coded mess, often then not, I have to re-read and re-read until I scrape it off completely. But this just doesn’t feel natural. It might be but I am not convinced. It just feels a high effort thing, not as the author described it. “Just two prompts”, “completed in an afternoon”. I am not sure that is true, could be skill issue on my end but cannot comprehend at the moment.

Harshad Numbers

Harshad Numbers

Link: https://youtu.be/dgwevhEykWQ

Context

This is cool. Harshad, meaning happy numbers, they result in full integers when the divided by the number itself form the sum of its digits. Mathematics is so infinite, this inspires me to write code and think about problems from mathematical perspective. Yes, sometimes, that gets in the way of the actual problem, but on the leisure side, its fun to play with math.

Source: techstructive-weekly-62