Oh, I'm not talking about using only LLMs, for sure. I am currently taking a college sequence (currently French 3), with textbooks, homework, and everything. 100% agreed on the value of traditional texts/flows. On the matter of LLMs being permissive with grammar, you need to use the tools specifically meant to check grammar. I use LanguageTool for everything I write to make sure my grammar is both correct and current.
LLMs are invaluable IMO for immediate feedback on your writing and speaking. I've started using French inputs for most regular interactions, even with things like Claude Code for my work and for all LLM interactions (I use Grok). Before I input into Claude Code, I check the grammar and content with LLMs. Tutors and traditional paths will not help with this.
The other sequence I'm starting to do is to have conversations as I take baby steps in speaking/listening. Agreed that talking to real French speakers is the best, but initially we tend to be shy because we're so bad, and using a non-human can put us at ease. You may be different, but IMO this is typical. And this post was about refining this via an app that adds spaced repetition, and I appreciate that.
I'm surprised by the pushback by some people here; I wonder if they're actually learning French (or another language) themselves or just reacting generally against use of LLMs vs. humans here (a common trend on HN). I am learning French, and LLMs have proven to be very useful for me. Great to see the author go beyond current LLM voice exchanges by employing spaced repetition; thank you! I'll check it out.
I'm no longer sure you have to, actually. I mean, we do trust the assembly that compilers produce without having to read it, don't we? We're rapidly getting to that stage with LLMs, IMO.
We pay 7.25% sales tax in California, the highest in the country. Plus, county taxes can go up to 3.5%, adding up to 10.75% total. It's not too much to ask for basic stuff like maintaining the streets when paying this kind of money. The roads in Orange County, where I live, are great though.
The problem is that biases tend to be built in via even rudimentary stuff like bad training material and biased tuning via system prompts. E.g., consider the 2026 X post experiment, where a user ran identical divorce scenarios through ChatGPT but swapped genders. When a man described his wife's infidelity and abuse, the AI advised restraint to avoid appearing "controlling/abusive." For a woman in the same situation, it encouraged immediately taking the kids and car for "protection."
Articles like this keep popping up because they're catnip to those who hate AI or feel threatened by it. On coding, I routinely see people trashing vibe coding and jumping on the slightest mistake agents may make, never mind that human devs screw up all the time. And write-ups citing stats on AI coding tend to be written by folks who either don't code for a living or never earnestly tried it.
I use Claude Code regularly at work and can tell it is absolutely fantastic and getting better. You obviously need to guide it well (use plan mode first) and point to hand coded stuff to follow, and it will save you enormous amount of time and effort. Please don't put off trying AI coding out after reading misinformed articles like this.
There's a BIG difference, at least with tools like Claude Code: plan mode. I'm now using Claude Code a lot at at work, and the first thing I do is enter plan mode where I can have a "conversation" asking it explain how it would implement. Just a few back/forth later I end up refining its plan to conform to good (or what I think is "good") design, after which it will tell me exactly what it is going to do (with code diffs), which I sign off on (again, potentially after a few iterations). It's only then that it generates the code.
By contrast, on one project many years ago I was reviewing the code generated by an overseas team, and I couldn't make head or tail of it, it was an absolute tangled mess that was impossible to fix.
Well, I'm sure we've all seen code produced by human developers that is 10x worse than what my Claude Code produces (certainly I have), so let's be real. And it's improving scary fast.
LLMs are invaluable IMO for immediate feedback on your writing and speaking. I've started using French inputs for most regular interactions, even with things like Claude Code for my work and for all LLM interactions (I use Grok). Before I input into Claude Code, I check the grammar and content with LLMs. Tutors and traditional paths will not help with this.
The other sequence I'm starting to do is to have conversations as I take baby steps in speaking/listening. Agreed that talking to real French speakers is the best, but initially we tend to be shy because we're so bad, and using a non-human can put us at ease. You may be different, but IMO this is typical. And this post was about refining this via an app that adds spaced repetition, and I appreciate that.