DuChinese is a great app for reading stories at beginner levels of vocabulary. It also supports tap-to-lookup and saving words to flashcards, but unfortunately they don't integrate with Anki, only their own app's system.
DuChinese does have an integration with HackChinese, which is basically a Mandarin only paid version of Anki with a sleek interface. I use it for convenience because I find managing Anki decks too tedious.
Yeah DuChinese is I think the premier Chinese graded reader app right now. We also have the tap-to-lookup and make-flashcard-from-content flows (unfortunately only in our system for now, haven't build flashcard import/export yet). The thing we have that they don't is the ability to generate content about whatever subject you want (which can help make it much more personally interesting)
Also while naming quality resources I should also mention [Pleco](https://www.pleco.com/) - it's _definitely_ the best Chinese dictionary app - highly recommended.
A related question: what type of software engineering work is the most relaxed? So far I have only worked in live services and while I don't feel overworked, I often have background anxiety that I will break something and cause a huge impact. Are there any product areas found at FAANGs that don't cause this anxiety?
I'm very satisfied not working for software companies. My clients businesses revolve around real estate, transportation, manufacturing, etc. For them, software is a tool, not a product. Apart from stuff you mentioned, such as relaxed deadlines, it's also much more interesting for me.
When I was working for software companies, understanding the core business of our clients wasn't really that important, at least not at my position - just bunch of APIs around RDBMS, that sort of stuff.
Now I get to talk to end users and they get to talk to me, resulting in me learning a lot of stuff completely unrelated to software development (which is often exciting) and them getting something they actually want.
Also, for some reason, SCRUM was very stressful for me. No matter the actual deadlines, the everyday standups, all the organizational meetings and constant surveillance made me think that all the issues are urgent, which was rarely the case.
I think "wanting to go for a beer" is a pretty bad metric for many reasons, not the least of which is that I don't like drinking beer. A better metric might be: "If I need help would I regret asking this person?" or "If I had a disagreement would it be an overall positive experience?" I have worked with people who excel technically but that skill is largely offset by the negative effect they have on social interactions.
I don't think it's a bad metric (it really isn't a metric at all) but it's a bad example. It doesn't have anything to do with going out or drinking beer. I think there's a negative connotation because people interpret it as, "Less talented developers who can schmooze and socialize will get ahead". I don't think that's what this means at all. It's that writing software is a team sport and thinking that you can go it alone and that interacting with teammates isn't important is a flag right there. Your skills generally only effect yourself. If you're on a team of 10 your own personal skills are only 1/10 of the contribution. Worst case is you aren't that good but the damage is limited to 1/10th. If you've got problems interacting with people you can take out the entire team. Am I going to come in on Monday and have 5 developers at my door telling me about all the crap you pulled? Larry says you told him that you're just being honest but his code sucks. Susan says you revered her code and then made a monster commit touching nearly everything without telling anyone. Apparently you spent the entire weekend reworking the entire build system to some new system because according to you it's way better than what we are using and now no one can get any work done until they figure out what you've done nor did you get permission to even make the changes. Then to top it off insulted the entire team by implying they were too stupid to see how awesome what you have done is and they should be thanking you.
How are you going to fix this? If you were a weak developer there are things you can do to about that. Fixing a persons inability to get along with others is more difficult. So now they're in the position of firing you. You'd have to be really bad not to make it an unpleasant business and afterward it's going to take weeks to shake off the bad feelings.
As a hiring manager I'm never going be given a hard time for passing on what might have been a good candidate but I'm definitely going to hear it about hiring someone who makes their lives miserable on a daily basis.
See the problem now? That isn't a description of you but they don't know that but they've probably had experiences like that so they're simply playing the numbers at risk mitigation and when you give them reason to think that might be the way things are going to go they pass.
