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Duolingo Blog
Company blog · blog.duolingo.comother
Duolingo Blog is the company blog at blog.duolingo.com. Since 2012, 72 different Hacker News readers have linked it 94 times, most often “Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Read about how Duolingo works, and how our learning scientists are working to make education fun and accessible to everyone.
Most-linked posts?
- Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-44 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-03-14
- Meaningful metrics: How data sharpened the focus of product teams3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-18
- Migrating Duolingo's Android app to 100% Kotlin3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-06
- Duolingo: We reduced our cloud spending by 20%3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-03
- The Duolingo Handbook3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-02-10
- Ending and honoring our volunteer Contributor program3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-10
- Language matters: What learners need to know about Ukrainian3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-04
- “Hi, it’s Duo”: The AI behind the meme2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-17
- The next step in bringing our characters to life2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-18
- Get to know the AI behind every video call with lily2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-24
What Hacker News says?
They will target certain demographics in ways that their lawyers can argue are legal such as giving more interviews to Grace Hopper attendees or schools with favorable demographics [1]. This is a great way to poach minorities from different companies without moving bringing any minorities to tech in any significant capacity. This is probably why men are increasingly going to Grace Hopper [2]. [1] https://blog.duolin…
Comment linking /how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gender-ratio-for-new-software-engineer-hires/
on “Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs”Submitted Request Tracing at Duolingo as a story · 24 points
HN discussioni don't know why people are taking Duolinguo and relatives as the definitive course to learn a language... they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency' some people are quite fine learning a limited number of phrases to lurk in a country. a great part of communication among humans also happens with the body/eyes. no one needs to discuss their phD dissertation in 4 differen…
Comment linking /can-duolingo-make-me-fluent/
on “LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo”Submitted Duolingo Helps Student to Propose to His American Girlfriend as a story · 24 points
HN discussionIrrelevant nitpick: "gender" in linguistics means "category". Objects in grammatically gendered languages are rarely/never categorized as "manly" or "effeminate"; they're, for example, categorized as "animate" or "inanimate". [1] [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/what-is-grammatical-gender/
Comment linking /what-is-grammatical-gender/
on “Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken”Submitted Migrating Duolingo's Android app to 100% Kotlin as a story · 16 points
HN discussionSeems like Duolingo apparently uses both? Or perhaps one of these is out of date. >As Duolingo’s products grow and evolve to reach even more learners around the world, Lottie animations help us keep users engaged, delighted, and always learning.[0] >We thought the answer might lie in an alternative to a game engine —something that can help us take a limited number of assets and turn those into a virtually unlimited…
Comment linking /world-character-visemes/
on “Rive Renderer for real-time vector graphics is now open source”Submitted Duolingo's Video Call Offers Realistic Conversation Practice as a story · 12 points
HN discussionLanguage encodes what people need it to encode to be useful. I heard of an example of colors--there are some languages that don't even have a word for blue. https://blog.duolingo.com/color-words-around-the-world/
Comment linking /color-words-around-the-world/
on “Ask HN: Any insider takes on Yann LeCun's push against current architectures?”Submitted Ten things all languages have in common as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThey started adding B1 level content a couple years ago, although I agree with the overall point that it's probably not going to get you there on its own. https://blog.duolingo.com/how-are-duolingo-courses-evolving/
Comment linking /how-are-duolingo-courses-evolving/
on “Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO”Submitted Are Any Words the Same in All Languages? as a story · 9 points
HN discussionDriven by many refugees that sought asylum in Sweden, I believe. https://blog.duolingo.com/our-commitments-to-helping-refugee...
Comment linking /our-commitments-to-helping-refugees/
on “Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO”Submitted Duolingo: We reduced our cloud spending by 20% as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThis actually isn’t true anymore. They stopped the contributor program and started doing it in-house, or at least paying the contributors: https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-cont...
Comment linking /ending-honoring-our-volunteer-contributor-program-2/
on “Duolingo S-1 IPO”Submitted Standing with Ukraine: A Message from the CEO as a story · 7 points
HN discussionOpenAI's GPT4 https://blog.duolingo.com/duolingo-max/
Comment linking /duolingo-max/
on “Duolingo Cuts 10% of Contractors as It Uses More AI to Create App Content”Submitted How Duolingo safely deleted 10k lines of code as a story · 6 points
HN discussionHi Jztan, glad you're exploring this space! I'm the co-founder of MobileBoost, and I'd love to introduce our product, GPT Driver ( https://www.mobileboost.io/ ). We started two years ago with an AI-native approach, which is particularly useful for handling dynamic flows, hard-to-locate UI elements, and testing across multiple platforms and languages. Our main objective is to reduce test maintenance effort. Duolingo…
Comment linking /reduced-regression-testing/
on “Maestro – Next generation mobile UI automation”Submitted The Duolingo Handbook as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere is a Duolingo for Music, worth a look! https://blog.duolingo.com/music-course/
Comment linking /music-course/
on “Ask HN: Tools or frameworks to build music theory games”Submitted Language matters: What learners need to know about Ukrainian as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSmall companies can try lots of interesting things, and they may or may not work out for them. Gravity Payments famously has their $70k minimum salary[0]. Duolingo insisted on gender parity in CS hires[1]. But if Amazon or Microsoft tried the same thing, it might not work. I’m more interested in what geopay is going to look like industry-wide than what one small company is doing, but they might make an interesting d…
Comment linking /how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gender-ratio-for-new-software-engineer-hires/
on “One Job, One Pay – Globally”Submitted Duolingo’s Data-Driven Approach to Education as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis blog post suggests they are also trying to represent the learner. The way you look doesn't dictate the languages you can learn. https://blog.duolingo.com/lgbtq-representation-in-duolingo-s...
Comment linking /lgbtq-representation-in-duolingo-stories-and-characters/
on “Big Layoff at Duolingo”Submitted Why Duolingo switched from Hearts to a battery as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAccording to Duo themselves its already included in duolingo max -- https://blog.duolingo.com/duolingo-max/
Comment linking /duolingo-max/
on “Show HN: Learn a new language by speaking with AI”Submitted We started our async Python migration as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIn case anybody is interested, there's a very good explanation of some language-related political subtleties in https://blog.duolingo.com/ukraine-language/
Comment linking /ukraine-language/
on “The Politics of “Ukraine” versus “The Ukraine””Submitted Do cats "meow" in every language? as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
