About Language Den

Language Den is a one-person project. No team. No investors. No growth hackers.

I'm Scott Harvey — a web and iOS developer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with over 15 years of experience building software, primarily with Ruby on Rails.

I built Language Den because I couldn't find a vocabulary app that did what I actually needed. I wanted something that was serious about spaced repetition — not a gamified streak tracker, not a flashcard app bolted onto a social network. Just a focused tool that helps you learn and remember words in another language.

The existing options all had something wrong with them. Anki is powerful but intimidating and ugly. Duolingo is polished but teaches you almost nothing useful. Quizlet has no real spaced repetition. I wanted the effectiveness of Anki with none of the friction.

So I built it myself.

Language Den uses FSRS — a modern, open-source spaced repetition algorithm that has been shown to outperform the SM-2 algorithm Anki used for over a decade. It adapts to how you personally remember words and schedules reviews at exactly the right time.

Everything in the app exists because language learners need it. Nothing exists because a product manager thought it would increase engagement metrics.