Android: Techy or Non-Techy..It doesnt matter anymore

Whether you are a technical guy with strong programming knowledge or non-technical guy with no programming knowledge/background, not to worry about the underlying skills for developing android based mobile applications.

Sounds strange!!!! yeah its true …

1. If you are a developer, you can develop Android based apps using the Android SDK, a java based development environment allowing developers to create useful apps for the Android Smartphone Market
2. If you are not a developer who has’nt programmed a computer before, you can still create Android apps by using the newly launched Google’s App Inventor tool - Beta, a web/browser based development environment uses the concept of visual programming language

Google App Inventor Tool for Android is Google’s experiment for the non-developers enabling them to create apps not just consume apps. It has been under development for a year and user testing has been done mainly in schools with groups targeted users who are not major computer science background.

Key features:

• It doesn’t require any local installation as completely web based
• It allows or provides interfaces for developers to use the rich features of drag-n-drop
• It provides block editors based on OpenBlocks Java Library for creating visual programming languages. The build -in compiler translates the blocks (visual representations) into implementation code that could run on Android.

Screenshots:

Right now as the tool is in Beta stage, you cannot directly get your hands on it immediately, but need to get invites to access and try out. I am yet to get my hands on this graphical SDK-in-a-browser, but have requested one, not sure when will get them.

Downside:

First let me put down my thoughts on this tools downside or possibly could be the one as below

• Major problem on such kind of model in this case will be easy drag’n'drop development, but no or little idea on the underlying code that could possibly result on poor quality, unreliable, or sometimes insecure app.
• Also I guess loads and lots of apps will come into play, managing and indentifying which one is the best will be difficult.

Letz see how these downsides will be managed by Google in the long run.

Upside:

• On the positive note, as mass crowd is targeted here to me it is like the first stepping stone for the students or anyone to get more interested, to enable them better coders in near future and start learning actual Java, maybe one day they will create the next killer app.

Reference Links:

• http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
• http://www.appinventor.org/