What part of the world are you from out of curiosity? Husband-tron (as I call him) is Quebecois. I’ve heard him do the same English conjugation in French as you’re talking about.
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I’m from Quebec too 
Gaidheal summed it up in the first response.
I don’t see how this prevents us from “thinking Japanesy”. Doesn’t it do the opposite? It encourages the lack of pronouns in the Japanese. If you want to show the same sentence being used in different contexts, then those contexts need to be included on the card.
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All reactions that I support (native English/French speaker myself) 
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For what it’s worth, I completely agree with you.
Unfortunately, context is more complicated than: “if it’s not present, always assume it’s I”. If you were to walk into the middle of a conversation between to people, “I studied Japanese” and “my extremely talented and unbelievably obese canary studied Japanese” would sound the same.
Someone mentioned that when you don’t know the context, the speaker is the subject, or something to that effect. Unfortunately, not knowing is not the the same as knowing not. What I mean is this: just because you don’t know what the context is, doesn’t mean that you know that the subject is not some third-party. I find irresponsible to reduce a language’s subtleties by making blanket assumptions.
As has been said, in a translation effort of a arger text meant for consumption by English speakers, the context will be there, and the explicit overall lack of one will mean that the subject is the speaker. But in isolation, this shortcut seems like a great way to force one’s self to learn bad habits.
Having said that, I do not support out of context sentence-learning as a rule, thereby rendering this whole argument unnecessary for myself, personally. A wider context is a good idea, it seems to me, as it gives you a sense of, not only the meaning, but also the flow of the language.
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Everything you mentioned involves adding all kinds of assumptions to this perfectly innocuous sentence. Everyone knows walking in on a conversation makes it different, but I see no reason to assume that there’s some convoluted thing we’re not being told rather than just taking the sentence at face value as something presented to the listener as is.
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You’d be surprised how some things can influence the way you speak your native language. After living abroad (for less than 4 years, off and on) in a non native English speaking country, when I visit the states or meet someone from the states abroad they comment on my “accent”. It’s a bizarre experience.
I don’t know how much that’s related to the context of just using incorrect English in a learn another language context. But I did want to mention, how you interact with your language in unnatural or different ways can influence how you speak no matter how long you’ve been speaking said language and even if you can’t see it personally. I personally don’t hear it, but I’ve gotten that comment fairly often, even when I’m in my home state.
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I agree, I think assuming a context when there is none is liable to create some bad habits.
I couldn’t tell you why “it should be that way” But what I was taught when I was studying under Japanese professors from Japan in Uni was that in this situation if you don’t know the context someone is talking about themselves. If context is given then you will know differently. So the answer I believe my professors would tell you is “it is that way, because that’s just the way Japanese is” It’s not a “real” answer, but sometimes people don’t know why things are the way they are when it comes to language. Language is full of irregularities and exceptions to rules. It’s just something that happens based on many different things culturally/socially.
If there is previous context, that would change the meaning of the sentence, then the card was poorly designed (or is assuming the learner knows the context) by leaving out the context that would change the meaning.
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Tons of people have already tried to explain the mistakes in your thought process, but since I recalled a great passage from an excellent book by Japanese professor Jay Rubin I thought I would share:
All Japanese sentences have subjects. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be sentences. True, as [Dr. Eleanor] Jorden says, “there is no grammatical requirement to express a subject,” but just because we don’t overtly refer to it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Subjects and verbs do not exist in separate universes that float by chance in positions of greater or lesser proximity. They are securely bound to one another, and unless we insist upon that, our grasp of the Japanese sentence becomes more tenuous with each more complicating verbal inflection.
…
It’s one thing to say the need to keep track of subjects is crucial, but quite another to say how to do it. One extremely effective method can be found in the now discredited language-learning technique of translations-- extremely precise translation in which you never translate an active Japanese verb into a passive English one, in which you carefully account for every implied “actor” in a Japanese verbal sandwich, in which you consciously count the number of people involved in an expression…"
-Jay Rubin, “Making Sense of Japanese” pg. 30-31
In other words, ALL Japanese sentences have a subject whether it’s stated or not, so translating a Japanese sentence into an English subject-less sentence fragment is absolutely incorrect and in no way “literal.” If you want to get better at really understanding Japanese you need to do the opposite, and insist on always explicitly translating implied subjects and objects so you get a clear picture of what’s actually being stated.
To add to this, Japanese works on a system of known vs. unknown. Things that are in the known register between both parties can be left out, as in English we would insert a pronoun. If the subject is not explicitly stated that means it is already known to the listener. In this case there’s no other context, so the only shared information is the speaker himself. In this case we would then have to infer the subject is the speaker. This is just the way the Japanese language works. If you want to think more Japanese then this is a good place to start.
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I second the recommendation of Making Sense of Japanese. If OP is having difficulty with viewing subjects that are not explicitly, directly stated in Japanese as subjects, Rubin explains the grammar and reasoning behind many of the points discussed in this thread clearly and with humor. The text also thoroughly explains points students tend to find opaque, like when to use は vs が. Plus, it’s inexpensive (or it was when I bought it).
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Only, no, context is not more complicated than that.
Your “walk in on conversation” is not analogous, at all. Walk in on an English conversation and you will face most of the same issues; you have missed any previous discussion that the speakers may refer to while you are present. Of course, if you are to be included in the conversation, they will reintroduce anything that you need for context, anything not reintroduced simply is not relevant to future discussion.
To sum up, once again, lack of any other context is no other context, because that is how Japanese works, in fact.
I was also going to bring up Jay Rubin (which I recently read). I’ll add to your quote my takeaway on the whole pronoun thing:
Put simply. The literal translation of “I did homework” into Japanese is 宿題をした while 私は宿題をした or 私が宿題をした would add emphasis and/or distinction that’s not present in the english phrase.
Rubin calls this the zero pronoun: Japanese pronouns are indeed present, they’re just invisible. But in english they are not, and thus must be added for a translation to have the same literal meaning.
All that said, I think the earlier chapters of Tae Kim were helpful too in the way they tried to really just indicate what was literally written in the sentence.
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You could also call that arrogant shoe-horning of western language theory to foreign languages 
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I’m not one hundred percent sure what any one is even arguing about. personally… the way I would translated it is.
(the subject) did homework together with a friend(or their friends).
Actually also because context is so ever illusive like everyone has said… when practicing I usually do non-literal translations because it’s all just practice and I just want to know I grasp the actually words in front of me. I would also say:
Friend(s), together, homework, did.
But I’m crazy and know it so leave me alone! 
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Nothing crazy about that. It’s a solid step closer to thinking in Japanese, depending on what’s really going on in your head as you think it.
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If you want to learn to understand Japanese naturally, you shouldn’t even be translating to English in the first place. When translating, say, a book or something, it’s pretty obvious that it’s necessary to translate into natural English. In exactly what context would you need to translate Japanese literally? I can see why you would do it when you’re a beginner, but in that case it’s also very important to understand what the sentence is actually implying, which is of course that the “I” person did homework. This sentence is a bad example to prove your point anyway, when there doesn’t even exist any context outside of 友達と一緒に宿題をした. It’s a sentence created in a vacuum for example purposes, and the author of the sentence obviously wanted the subject to be “I”. When using your Japanese knowledge in the wild, you’ll almost always be given the context to infer the subject, so will hardly ever need to omit it.
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I did that at first during my classes. I’d write the English words above the Japanese ones. It helps at first to understand the structure of the phrases. As you get more comfortable with the language, you won’t feel the need to do this anymore.
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I’m trying very hard to do better and compartmentalise my languages so I can actually sound properly refined and civilised in each. Please bear with me. 
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I was just pulling your leg 
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