2000+ day streaker here, 5.5 years give or take, and I agree that the original article reads about right. I feel Duolingo hit the sweet spot roughly two years in, that is to say a good balance of introducing new vocab with revision of previous topics. It's still a very good way to pick up some basics, and I learned more with it than I ever did when I studied a language as part of my secondary education.
When Duolingo changed the way the skill tree worked a couple (?) of years ago it felt like it became more of a grind. I know they have some pretty smart people working on the app though, so I'm sure they're going in the right direction; but it feels like it's now easier to progress through the tree and the amount of vocab has been reduced, including hiding/simplifying the grammar study. IIRC in the original tree you had things like the "passé composé" introduced sooner, now they appear at a point that I suspect most users will have given up.
FWIW I tried Memrise early on and I didn't like the non-literal approach to the flash cards. I've been using Anki, which has some good decks but they can be questionable - for example the top 500 French words doesn't include the articles with the nouns, not a good thing.
Of course, the biggest things that have contributed to learning: moving to a French speaking country, switching all my devices to French, attending some classes, volunteering in a local gallery where I need to speak and use some vocab I wouldn't usually encounter. Still a long way to go though.
When Duolingo changed the way the skill tree worked a couple (?) of years ago it felt like it became more of a grind. I know they have some pretty smart people working on the app though, so I'm sure they're going in the right direction; but it feels like it's now easier to progress through the tree and the amount of vocab has been reduced, including hiding/simplifying the grammar study. IIRC in the original tree you had things like the "passé composé" introduced sooner, now they appear at a point that I suspect most users will have given up.
FWIW I tried Memrise early on and I didn't like the non-literal approach to the flash cards. I've been using Anki, which has some good decks but they can be questionable - for example the top 500 French words doesn't include the articles with the nouns, not a good thing.
Of course, the biggest things that have contributed to learning: moving to a French speaking country, switching all my devices to French, attending some classes, volunteering in a local gallery where I need to speak and use some vocab I wouldn't usually encounter. Still a long way to go though.