Indeed. A month or two ago I reported serious bugs in the iOS app in video mode whereby it frequently went back to the beginning forcing the user to waste time finding their current location. That’s not fun for a 85 minute film. I figured out a workaround, it’s tedious but it works. Or rather it did.
They’ve added another bug which breaks my workaround, So now a video regularly restarts and there’s nowt I can do about it. Well done LingQ.
It’s obvious they don’t have regression testing, their developers don’t routinely use the app, and they prioritise adding new features over fixing existing bugs.
Oh and I had a discussion in this forum with one of their staff, and he refuses to acknowledge the existence of these bugs. He says it works as it should. Unbelievable.
They don’t. The programmers and QA people don’t use the product in exactly the same way that every customer does. They use a feature the way it was INTENDED to be used – the way customers were expected to use it. That gets tested. But some customers always use things in ways that nobody ever imagined. I saw this on a regular basis from 1977 to 2020: customers finding bugs in allegedly “fully tested” software products.
But that might not be the problem at LingQ. Maybe the problem is that LingQ combines products from different companies – products they can’t fix bugs in, because LingQ doesn’t have the source code. In that situation, LingQ can only pass the bug report on to the right company, and hope they will fix it.
Or maybe LingQ is combining two products that (in some situations) don’t work properly together. In that situation, there is no bug in each product, but can LingQ make them work properly together?
When I watch a French film in video mode, sometimes I hear an unknown word or phrase. So I switch to line mode, then switch back . Often the video resets to the start. I then have to search for my original location. This happened often this evening, and it can be quite hard to do. Is this really an unintended way to use the system? I would argue that it is basic.
And if I watch a video, and swich to another app - maybe an important email arrives, or I look up a word - then when I switch back to LingQ, it always resets the video to the start. Is this really an unintended way to use the system? I would argue that it is basic. I reported this bug months ago, and since then the first bug appeared, so the system has regressed.
It has got to the stage where I’m asking myself if I get any benefit from LingQ as the bugs are so serious. I even had one staff member suggest that these aren’t bugs but design features.
My suspicion is that they are rushing to add new features and languages to remain competitive. But they are not competitive when basic features don’t work.
They even had a bug whereby for a week or two the app wouldn’t even open without crashing. I had to uninstall it, then reinstall it. It would then work for a while before crashing, and then refusing to open. I had to do that uninstall reinstall many times during an hour session. I’ve never seen such a serious bug in a paid for software product. It is a show stopper which should never escape into the wild.
LingQ would be amazing if it worked.
I worked in software for 30+ years. They may be working with very complex technology, or libraries, which might be poorly documented, or just hard to use. So we can’t draw firm conclusions. But I am sure that the software testing process is not good enough. My guess is that they allow developers to integrate fixes and enhancements without sufficient testing.
I noticed that this happens if no word is selected when switching back to page mode. I’ve therefore grewn the habit of clicking on a random word before switching back. You are right, though, that this, like so many other “features” are hilarious to begin with.
Considering that LingQ doesn’t really provide anything you cannot get for free and only serves as a “quality of life” app, bundling everything together, the somewhat ignorant attitude towards everything that is related with the user interface is just mind-blowing.
Indeed. Almost all of the content comes from outside, and is available easily enough. That it keeps a tally of words read is useful but far from essential, but the coins and streaks are just hooks to keep you addicted. In German the dictionary is not so useful.
To add to this, I am currently watching a video in German. The German transcript in LingQ is all over the place it’s completely haywire i.e. nonsense. I went to YouTube, the transcript in English is fine. The German and English text in the video (unreadable in the small LingQ video) is fine. In other words, LingQ provides a WORSE experience than using YouTube directly.