Sorry for the delay guys!
Man, I'm sounding pathetic. Delays, delays....
I spent the better part of last week working with Mathieu Blondel on Nihongo Benkyo. If you haven't seen it before, you owe it to yourself to check it out:
httpd://www.nihongobenkyo.org
Mathieu's vision of a fully integrated Japanese learning tool is compelling and he has a great start with the dictionary work that he's done.
To be honest, I was very tempted to pitch in with him and give up on JLDrill altogether.
Why didn't I?
Well, as much as I support the great work that Mathieu is doing, I've realized that I'm after something a bit different. JLDrill was never intended to be an all-singing, all-dancing, you'll-never-need-another-Japanese-tool-again sort of application. It's a drill program.
This comes down to my deeply ingrained Unix background. Do one thing and do it well. Keep it small and keep it simple. Give the user a billion different options so that they can customize what they are doing to their heat's content.
My goal is to provide people the tools to put together a variety of Japanese language drills (kana, kanji, vocabulary, grammar, etc). Not only that, but to provide these drills with a variety of different techniques (for instance, Heisig-style approach for kanji, flash cards, multiple choice, whatever you can think of).
Learning a language is an intensely personal thing. JLDrill is intended to be a super drill tool that accomodates to *your* learning style.
It is not intended to be (and will never be) the all encompasing tool that Nihongo Benkyo will be. It will never integrate all the things that you will need when you are learning Japanese. For such a user-friendly integrated environment, I highly suggest you look at and support Mathieu's work. Personally, I'm already using it when I read my manga and I really like it.
But if you want a drill tool that's small and infinitely modifiable and *specializes in drilling*, the stay tuned. The show is just begining :-)
Mike
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RE: Go check out Nihongo Benkyo [ reply ]