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Comment by smitty1e | Hacker News Reader

I drank the Samsung kool-aid, with the Galaxy Sx phone, Gear Active watch, and the Level headphones.

The Health App has been a win. Tracking meals and what have you is straightforward.

But the real win is the gamification of the Global Challenge. While completely meaningless in any real-world sense, somehow keeping the step score and all of the silly achievements and missions help to quantify and motivate.

Recently, via the headphones, I've taken in some outstanding podcasts while out walking. (No specifics, lest I violate the HN orthodoxy.)

Overall, any app that gets us up and moving is a positive thing.

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This is exactly why duolingo owl has so much power over me. Can't lose my 235 day streak and can't drop out of to a lower league after working so hard to get to that league.

> duolingo owl has so much power over me.

I use duolingo as well - and one of the saddest days was when I lost a 100+ day streak. It's funny how a meaningless number can have so much power.

My experience is different here.

Every time when I am about to lose a streak, I would try hard not to be influenced emotionally, and would regard an opportunity to keep my ego in check. I have lost streaks many times, 50+ maybe three times, 100+ one time, and I still feel fine with myself.

Normally I would practice Duolingo in the morning before coffee everyday, like a ritual.

I don't remember perfectly, but the creator of Lodash (javascript library) had something like a 365 day streak of coding everyday. But it was broken because he committed late a night and the cutoff was on a different timezone. He was so bothered by it, he contacted GitHub to fix it for him.

Couldn't he have simply back dated a commit (or edited the time of an existing commit)? Ex. https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti

I've used Duolingo a few times and each time I quit it was because a steak ended.

I've maintained my 758-day streak freeze for basically the entire summer using streak freezes from accrued lingots. Not sure I still deserve the streak, but it's definitely kept Duolingo in the front of my mind even as I've taken a break (and I'm getting low on lingots, so I'll be getting back on the horse soon).

Was/is Duolingo effective for you? How much have you improved since starting it and what was your skill level when you started? Asking because I've had a couple of false starts with it, but I'm feeling motivated again!

I am not sure how much it helped me since I haven't really used my spanish in real world yet.

I only knew 2 words in spanish. I go to cross english-spanish meetups and I can form basic sentences and ask questions ect and I can understand some if they speak very slowly and give me a pause to interpret it.

Thanks for your review.

> gamification of the Global Challenge.

I have personally experienced how powerful gamification ux can be. Especially if used for a positive outcome.

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