I can’t make up my mind if I love it or hate it. On one hand this is like SSHapi on the other there’s no structure, no contract… i had similar doubts with Cockpit.
I wouldn’t drop WordPress for Astro - but I did for Hugo. Never been happier.
My perspective comes from enterprise: we use(d) a marketing agency to run two websites. A few months ago I discovered our team was spending 30+ minutes just to publish a blog post written by a product manager. Everything was built on Elementor blocks. Articles pasted from Word kept breaking styles. 20+ plugins creating a security nightmare.
With AI assistance, we migrated to Hugo in three days. 800+ pages. 15 reusable components. Zero plugin chaos. Permissions handled at the git level. A simple HTML form to upload images and paste articles for less technical people, most were fine with markdown already. GitHub Actions for cleanup, validation, and spellchecking. Attack surface minimized. Performance improved drastically.
I’ll stand behind this: most people don’t need a bloated CMS. They need clarity on what they want to achieve, a solid process, and software that turns that process into a system.
I'm currently holding a 1100 days of streak of Italian in Duolingo, so I think I am entitled to drop in my 2 cents ;)
To some extent I agree with the critique. Would I be able to write an assay like the op in Italian? surely not. Is their marketing annoying? yes, very much. Is the platform perfect? far from this. However - after 3 years with Duo I am capable of having causal, simple conversations, I can navigate most of the websites in Italian, I understand most of the marketing emails, I can write simple emails myself. I trust this is mostly due to DuoLingo - building the vocabulary and quickly recognizing the patterns (and It was not super simple, my native language is Polish, and I was learning Italian via English interface - there was no Polish-Italian course back then, now there is one but it's just very low quality).
Duolingo helped me build a habit, knowledge of words and patterns. During the 3 years I've spent with the platform I made trips to Italy, I tried talking to people, tried to read texts and and explored some grammar myself. About a month I go feeling I've outgrown the platform I started doing 50min conversations on Preply platform and I am now confidently moving into stage where I can build longer sentences, use past and future tenses and irregular verbs.
In my discussions with friends I emphasize that IMHO Duolingo alone is not going to teach you (complete) language. If you have a goal to learn a language (in general, not on Duolingo) and you use it as one of the tools - it could be really helpful.
"We dream of a world in which your information is yours once more" I don't recall when my information was really mine. Like ever. In pre-internet days I didn't even knew who had what about me. Well, anyway... They are offering ability to manage data accessibility - all that by my self! Seems like another good part of my life gone doing just that and worrying if I set everything correctly.
Finally, I assume that once the 'pod' infrastructure goes down I can't use any of the apps - commercial or govt, right? naah, thanks