FrankenTongues (Frankie for short) is a language learning app for more advanced students that works entirely offline and aims to help the student become self-sufficient in their studies (independent of external resources) as quickly as possible.
It is also an experiment in multi-interface development, allowing rapid development of both front- and back-end features by offering console, TUI, and GUI interface from the same executable. Features are developed first on the command line, then fleshed out in the Tui, along with the back-end features to support them, before finally being deployed in the GUI.
As I continue to use Frankie in more ways and with different types of content, I’m beginning to see some friction points. Some are just a function of the limited graphics of the TUI interface I’m using, but some are about the actual information layout itself. Before I start tinkering with it, I want to talk my way through it. And that means: It’s rubber duckie time again!
As mentioned here, I recently got some exciting features working in console mode, but now I have to get them working on my phone. Getting the new code there should be easy enough - I can just pull the git repo - but delivering the lesson content is going to be a bit more complicated.
FrankenTongues began with some very specific features in mind - features that I couldn’t find in other tools - and it’s taken a while to get here, but today was the day I finally got to play with two of the biggest.