// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Reverse engineering the 2008 LogiCola, a logic drill program
Building LogiCola's new design language from what I found reverse-engineering the 2008 original.
Two years ago, I set out to design and release an updated version of
LogiCola with the goal of preserving
Professor Gensler’s work and
introducing a more accessible solution that could be used by students
carrying any device or operating system. Since the original was built for
Windows, many students were not able to use
it.
Today, many students use Chromebooks or mobile devices. In August, more than 100 devices in
Asia visited LogiCola 3 in a single week and 72 of them did at least one exercise.
Of those, 66 came from the Philippines. Over half
of them were phones and tablets. This is a signal I receive with
enthusiasm. The product seems to be delivering on the original promise
I made in 2024.
Today I’m releasing a new version that answers the feedback you shared through the Hacker News
discussion,
GitHub issues and
email. This release brings back mastery learning through infinite translation drills and embeds some of
the playfulness from the original software with my own touch.
The landing page prioritised the wrong
goals and put more
emphasis on user acquisition through an email subscription form than it
did on the logic drills.
Other commenters noted the design felt too modern and out of
place. My initial redesign made LogiCola 3 feel like enterprise software, a departure from the vibrancy of the old interface:
Making the port look modern by using a modern look makes tons of sense. The soul sucking feeling it produces comes from the modern look’s motivations, which is not the author’s fault alone, but instead from the ‘market and sell everything’ era we current live within.
The colourful backgrounds that change on every refresh have been one of the defining elements of the original brand. I borrowed the colour treatment from the original, but assigned a unique palette to every set. Syllogistic and propositional logic wear different colours. This way, you’ll always know where you are.
The Color dialog found in the 2008 program reveals nine colour schemes, each at three depths: Pastel, Moderate and Deep. Here are six of the schemes, with a background, a panel and a dark band along the foot. Roll the dice to see random ones, and try the three depths:
Here’s the screen that used to open every exercise, against the one that opens it now. Drag the slider to compare.