What I Built: Mel Feuerman’s Cinema-Inspired App to Learn Languages

Mel Feuerman's chatbot app, HALTwilio, was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Weizenbaum's natural language chatbot ELIZA. The original version of the app used Twilio's messaging API to have "conversations" with users, encouraging them to share how they were feeling. Since then, the app has evolved into a more complex tool that helps users learn to express themselves in multiple languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, and Chinese. The app uses Twilio for messaging on WhatsApp and provides interactive lessons to teach users the spelling and pronunciation of greetings in their chosen language. Feuerman's passion for learning languages is tied to his life experiences, including taking Chinese classes to learn basic phrases to greet his neighbors. At 81 years old, Feuerman has spent over 50 years learning programming and has found Twilio to be an ideal platform for developing iOS apps. He continues to refine the app and explore new technologies like Google's Dialogflow.