Noobular

Noobular is a software tutor made to help people learn as effectively as possible. Math Academy has proven that it's possible to build a software system that dramatically increases the rate of learning, using various techniques supported by decades of evidence. I'm personally a very satisfied customer of Math Academy, and I want to expand the reach of Math Academy's learnings to teach and learn subjects beyond math. TL;DR, Noobular is a Math Academy duplicate where anyone can upload content.

Development

Dependencies:

• Go
• Sqlite

Run server locally:

• go run cmd/server/main.go

Run tests:

• go test ./...

Checks:

• Linting: golangci-lint run
• Formatting: gofumpt -l -w .

Noobular rewrite

In February 2025, I'm rewriting Noobular.

Outline

• Make things extremely simple, prioritize features perfectly fit for myself because I am the only user right now.
  • No web UI to create content. Only a UI preview, enroll, and take courses.
  • CLI for creating content. Save content as text files locally, then upload them via the CLI.
  • No versioning for content at first. No editing, only creation and deletion.
• Tech stack
  • Main logic: Golang, use fmt/linting
  • DB: Sqlite, no ORM, yes migration tool
  • Frontend: HTMX
  • Hosting/deployment: raspberry pi, cloudflare tunnels
• Main features
  • Create knowledge points - set of questions
  • Create modules - sequence of content and knowledge points
  • Create course - set of modules with prerequisite relationships
  • Enroll in course
  • Content engine - render content, pick knowledge points, track answers
  • Diagnostic exam
  • Take modules - introduce new content, interactive, finely scaffolded
  • Review - spaced repetition to solidify long-term memory, address weak spots
  • Quizzes - measure learning

Current experiment

• I need a way to prove to myself whether Noobular actually works.
• Two stretch goals:
  • Use Noobular to teach someone else something: Hand-make a beginner cryptography course. I can personally evaluate the effectiveness, and can ask someone in my life to volunteer as a student.
  • Use Noobular to teach myself something: Use AI to generate content to teach me chemistry or physics. Try to pass the AP exam in ~2 months (some arbitrary fraction of a semester). This is not very advanced material, so AI should be accurate/reliable enough for this, though I will need to experiment a lot to get this to work well.

To do

• Build the basic system
• Conduct experiments
  • Make cryptography course
  • Chemsitry/physics