The tutor that repeats itself
The Greek challenge verdict is in (he won; Julia never practiced), and with it Severo's first honest product critique from its own maker: the suggestion loop circles the same topic, kitchen, breakfast, lunch, instead of exploring the vocabulary tree. Candidate fix: let users' prompts become shareable curricula. Plus the cedilla bug: a tutor must ask what keyboard you're holding.
// trace: where this idea came from
- ↳ video diary @ 32:04 (sugerencias que giran sobre lo mismo)
- ↳ video diary @ 33:43 (el bug del teclado y la cedilla)
- ↳ Entry 177-1: The curriculum that waits for you (el currículo que espera, ahora con su falla)
Seven theoretical days remain before Severo can publish, pending Google’s mood at review ▸ 28:02, and the Greek challenge, learn Greek with Severo to greet his brother’s girlfriend, ends by walkover: Julia never practiced ▸ 29:20. His five casual minutes a day ▸ 31:34 produced real greetings delivered in real Greek ▸ 29:25, and a design creed gets stated: Severo isn’t meant to be addictive, it’s “una especie de Anki mejorado” for actually studying; the multiplayer game version stays parked as future Sanfanson móvil ▸ 28:20.
The dogfooding also surfaces the first serious critique of the self-paced curriculum: its suggestion loop orbits. Tap a suggestion about the kitchen and the next suggestions are breakfast, then lunch, variations on the same room ▸ 32:04. A curriculum that waits for you, it turns out, can also wait too well, never pushing you off the branch you’re on. The constraint he refuses is the obvious fix, hand-authoring a curriculum ▸ 32:52; the candidate that excites him is social: every user’s prompt history is already a curriculum, so let people study through the paths other users cut ▸ 33:15.
el tutor también debe preguntar qué teclado tienes →
And one bug report worth keeping for its design moral: practicing “cafés”, the tutor kept rejecting his answer over a diacritic his English keyboard cannot type, cedillas and Greek marks unavailable, until he explained the hardware and it relented ▸ 33:43. A language tutor grades a learner through the learner’s instrument; empathy for the keyboard is part of the curriculum. Meanwhile Reisi’s simulation quietly matured in the background, deposits moving the balance, an alcancía, Netflix payable with pretend money ▸ 26:59…