[IAEP] Google demos Scratch-based Android development tool for students

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:45 AM, Kevin Cole <dc.loco at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/fgfvtXF_2a8/google-demos-codeless-android-development-tool-for-students.ars
> Google has announced a new browser-based visual development tool called App
> Inventor that allows users to create Android applications without having to
> write any code. It appears to be aimed primarily at students. App Inventor
> enables user interface design with a simple drag-and-drop layout system. The
> behavior of the user interface elements can be programmed via a visual
> development system that the user manipulates by organizing blocks with
> specific programming characteristics into various structures. The blocks can
> be dragged around and snapped into each other to form relatively
> sophisticated programs. This aspect of App Inventor is based on Scratch, an
> MIT visual programming language. The compiler that translates the blocks
> into Android bytecode is built on top of the GNU Kawa framework, which
> provides a Scheme-based intermediate language. It's worth noting that Kawa
> can also be used standalone to build entire Android applications with
> Scheme. We were not able to test App Inventor ourselves because it is still
> in closed beta and is not broadly available to the general public yet. If
> you want to try it yourself, you will have to register on the Google Labs
> website and wait for approval. For more details, see the official
> introduction and demo video. Read the comments on this post

It appears very interesting.  Unfortunately, the ripped out a lot of
the interesting StarLogo stuff:
   http://education.mit.edu/drupal/starlogo-tng
...and replaced with Android-specific user interface elements.

One could do roughly the same thing with GTK elements to make a Sugar
Activity builder.  Most of the hard work is already done w/ the
OpenBlocks framework:
   http://education.mit.edu/drupal/openblocks

It's a shame the framework is written in Java, which isn't the most
Sugar-friendly language.
  --scott

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