So you want to be an Android app developer — then you’ve got something in common with Google. The search giant wants you to develop apps for its mobile operating system — and it just announced a tool to help you get started.
Dubbed the App Inventor, Google’s new do-it-yourself code tool lets you build applications for Android smartphones. In announcing the tool, Google stressed that you don’t have to be a developer. In fact, App Inventor doesn’t require any programming knowledge at all. Instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks of code that tell the app how to behave.
Michael Gartenberg, a partner at Altimeter Group, said Google is in many ways democratizing mobile application development by making it easy for people with innovative ideas who lack sophisticated programming skills to build an app.
“What this will actually inspire remains to be seen,” Gartenberg said. “Some people have criticized the effort, saying there are going to be too many bad applications built. Others have praised it, saying this is going to open up application creation to a whole new set of users who might have great conceptual ideas but don’t have the formal programming skills.”
Create Your Own Games
Here’s how it works, in Google’s words: “The App Inventor offers created blocks for just about everything you can do with an Android phone, as well as blocks for doing ‘programming-like’ stuff — blocks to store information, blocks for repeating actions, and blocks to perform actions under certain conditions. There are even blocks to talk to services like Twitter.”
Google said games are a popular place to start, and was quick to add that you can build apps that tap into an Android-powered phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone. Not…