Anybody use Duolingo and actually become proficient in another language?

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Doubt it

I did Duolingo for 160 days to prepare for a trip to El Salvador. It helped a ton, but formal lessons would have taught me probably 10x faster. I continued until I went for about 2 years. After stopping, I still retained a lot, but the best way is more formal education/lessons and diving into the language/culture.

Not proficient but certainly learning some vocabulary

I did.

I took 2 years of Spanish in high school. That had the same almost useless effect that it had on every other high school student, but it did lay some groundwork.

Over 10 years later, I achieved a conversational level of Spanish using maybe 80% Duolingo. It was inefficient, but the gamification kept me going.

I think it is now much less efficient than it was when I used it, maybe half as efficient, because the app is now hammering and testing every detail to an unnecessary degree, and they are also trying to increase usage time.

I am probably not conversational anymore because I haven't kept up with it. If I had to learn again I might try to incorporate only like 25% Duolingo. I'm not sure if that's possible though. I might just not use it at all.