Android News
Google’s Android App Inventor makes app creation dead simple; that’s not a good thing
July 12, 2010 | by Andrew Kameka
Android, Google
App Inventor for Android simplifies the development process and provides drag-and-drop functions for creating apps. You don’t need to know Java, C+, or even HTML – just move a few things around, click a few buttons, and you’ve got yourself an app.
And that’s why it sucks.
To be fair, I haven’t even opened App Inventor so I can’t say that this What-you-see-is-what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor sucks; I’m simply saying that the idea and likely byproduct of it will probably stink up the Android Market. It’s already become annoying dealing with thousands of soundboards, ringtones, and sexy wallpaper apps. Being able to create without any programming knowledge will probably double the number of crappy apps. I can’t help but see this as Android’s version of terrible websites created with Frontpage, Geocities, and other lame WYSISWYG editors.
I pray that I’m proven wrong. Maybe App Inventor will turn out to be a clever way for people with lots of creativity and limited programming skills to build something fun and useful. We’ll know soon enough. Here are some apps created with App Inventor.
You should do more research before posting an article. I suggest checking out the android guys article on the same subject for an example.
C'mon man- sounding like an elitist iPhone user. Let's give this a chance before we all run in circles crying "the sky is falling… the end is near."
What if you can plug in third party stuff? Made available via Market? Hmm …. THAT would be interesting and could lead to new opportunities. Cheers A
I hate to point out that even *without* App Inventor, there are plenty of bad/useless apps on the Android Market today. Apps that are made by people using the SDK and the Java API. Keeping the bar to entry high does not prevent bad apps from being written. Lowering it, however, can encourage programmers to be to give the platform a try and may ultimately lead to some writing *real* code. If we're worried about bad apps, that is what application ratings and comments in the market are for. That's what market extensions like AppBrain are for. In the end, applications are lot like the internet. For every A List Apart, there are thousands are hideous MySpace pages that'll make your eyes bleed and your browser grind.
Yeah it's kind of like when all these blogging sites and systems allowed anyone to post all kinds of worthless dribble on the Internet. Who wants anything like that to happen again?
It would be nice if these were somehow separated or flagged from regular apps in the Market.
Come on man… This is a huge step forward in true openness and a world first in the mobile app industry. Literally *anyone* can create an application for their phone now and then share it with the world. The biggest point you’re making is a huge problem with or without the App Inventor – crappy applications “stinking” up the market. These people actually know how to write code and yet they still make thousands of dollars on a mere fart app.
You got plenty of hideous geocities webpages, but you also got good, clean, well-designed pages from complete amateurs too. And as time has passed, the really bad pages have mostly disappeared as people have internalized what good web design looks like. Which is completely beside the point. Even in the days of Geocities, there were many hideous pages with excellent, compelling content. Just because someone isn't good with web design (or programming) that doesn't mean they don't have deep domain knowledge in some other field. An easy tool like this will enable such people to bring their domain knowledge to others without having to also be programmers. Besides, it's not like the current crop of "professional" applications are shining exponents of excellence. It would be quite a challenge for a mere amateur armed only with Google's App Inventor to sink to the abyssal levels represented by soundboard and fart-noise apps. If anything, a tool like App Inventor will hopefully poison the market for such utter, unadulterated crap, creating a significant improvement in the average quality of market apps.
Why cant google in this case make a "hobby market" to for those who just plays around and then the real market where you have to pay to get an account to upload apps.
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