The HUGE GAP between the learning environment and the real cases (old.reddit.com)

If English language courses were anything like programming courses, the final project would be something like this:

     Write a five-paragraph short story, in pluperfect tense, except the fourth paragraph which should be in the historical present.  The story should involve a subject, a direct object, and an indirect object, each addressed with the correct case.  All conjugations of the verb 'to be' should be used at least once.

There's so much emphasis on using every feature of a given programming language that there isn't room to teach students how to do anything useful, especially in languages that have features that are purely academic and almost never found in common usage.