Don't know about hackers, but that method of teaching, "the direct method", is how I learned English back in the day. Our English teacher was an Esperantist, which was probably how he came in contact with this idea, "la rekta metodo" has strong connections with the Esperanto movement.
I've read the criticisms of it, and it could well be it works worse for others, but for me it worked very well - and I utterly failed to learn German to anything like the same level, despite ~8 years of classes in it. My German teachers were hardly consistent in their methods (some were very classicist-latin-grammarian types), but none of them used the direct method.
I've read the criticisms of it, and it could well be it works worse for others, but for me it worked very well - and I utterly failed to learn German to anything like the same level, despite ~8 years of classes in it. My German teachers were hardly consistent in their methods (some were very classicist-latin-grammarian types), but none of them used the direct method.