Perhaps, but it would have been of little use as a question there.
Once you acquire enough of a feeling for a foreign language that not every bit of your skill in it comes from somebody telling you that a particular thing is said in a particular way, you are doomed to live with a constant suspicion that your feeling is somehow off in a way you don’t recognize. Usually it can be suppressed and ignored, but sometimes it can’t, and occasionally it has to become a question. (I expect this is a fairly common experience.) This was one of those.
I'm not sure about your point about "leveling" vs "leveling up", because for me, "leveling" means making a surface level/flat and does not have any video game-related meaning, but the "on" is probably coming from the phrase "to read up on" something (meaning to study/read about something; there's also a slangier variation, "to bone up on" something).
As a native English speaker, yes that is kinda weird to be "incredibly irritated" by a sentence that's completely normal and well constructed.
With all due respect, this feels better suited as a journal entry rather than a comment on a HN thread.
Perhaps, but it would have been of little use as a question there.
Once you acquire enough of a feeling for a foreign language that not every bit of your skill in it comes from somebody telling you that a particular thing is said in a particular way, you are doomed to live with a constant suspicion that your feeling is somehow off in a way you don’t recognize. Usually it can be suppressed and ignored, but sometimes it can’t, and occasionally it has to become a question. (I expect this is a fairly common experience.) This was one of those.
I'm not sure about your point about "leveling" vs "leveling up", because for me, "leveling" means making a surface level/flat and does not have any video game-related meaning, but the "on" is probably coming from the phrase "to read up on" something (meaning to study/read about something; there's also a slangier variation, "to bone up on" something).