It was 2003 and I had just enrolled in a series of introductory programming modules as part of my computer science degree. I had spent the previous two years learning to code in Visual Basic, but now I was starting from scratch with new programming languages. I remember feeling completely lost as I tried to find my way. I pored over boring textbooks, doing my best to stay awake.
After three years of hard work, I left college with a solid degree and a world of opportunities opening up to me. I was grateful for the experience, but I wondered if there was a better way to learn.
20 years later, I started thinking that maybe it was time to learn how to work with AI-generating tools. This time, instead of turning to manuals, I opened the App Store in search of a tool that could guide me. I came across Sololearn, full of anticipation for a better learning experience.
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This article is part of a regular series exploring the apps we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
Once the app was downloaded, I signed up for their AI course, filled with the same sense of anticipation and opportunity I had felt as a young adult. Having been writing about AI for some time now, I breezed through the first few lessons without issue, but it quickly became challenging enough to engage my little grey cells.
Beyond the excellent questions that guide you, I am impressed by the AI interface built directly into the app. This allows for real-time feedback during classes and transforms the purely theoretical learning experience into a hands-on and engaging one.
As we all know, learning is rarely linear or completely enjoyable. There are times when it’s a real pain and the thought of giving up starts to cross your mind. Sololearn helps you in these moments by providing a “Streak” feature that tracks your ability to get consecutive correct answers and documents your longest streak. While these stats and features are pretty arbitrary and meaningless in many ways, they provide enough extra motivation to help you overcome some of these learning hurdles.
Even using the colors green and orange to communicate correct answers and serial successes helps release enough dopamine to keep you moving on to the next question or lesson.
Sololearn goes way beyond simple lessons and offers a set of engaging and surprisingly fun games. I tried the “Bug Hunter” game, which involves finding bugs in code to earn points. Rather than simple multiple-choice questions, you type your answer into the app’s AI machine, which then determines whether you’ve found the bug correctly. This helps you think about your answer and pushes you beyond a simple guessing game.
In addition to playing games with the app, it is also possible to challenge an opponent within the Sololearn community. I love competition of any kind, so these types of learning challenges help motivate me. After choosing the programming language you want, you select a person to play with. You don’t need to know the person, but rather are given a set of potential opponents. The only improvement I would like to see in these challenges is the ability to chat directly with the person you are playing against. This would help create a greater sense of competition. Without it, the games can feel a bit boring, like you are just playing against the computer.
The Sololearn community is not limited to games. You can also create code in Code Playground and publish it for the community to comment on. This is a fantastic tool for debugging errors and getting help and feedback on your work. This part of the app does not support AI prompt learning, which is a shame, but I hope it will be added in future releases.
Even though I haven’t spent more than three years on the Sololearn app, I can’t help but think that I could have benefited from a tool like this when I was in college. It would have been a fantastic supplemental learning tool that I could have used when I got tired of textbooks. The danger is that students won’t do the hard work needed to learn all the fundamental theory, but for those who can do both, they will be truly rewarded.
Download the Sololearn app for free on iOS Or Android
