http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=dc5d41dd3901e39f763a0f16e9afa2c3 via Byline The Android App Inventor from Google is intended to help nontechnical types create their own apps. An intrepid explorer plunges into do-it-yourself territory….
Truth is, Android App Inventor is only the latest in a long line of “programming for the rest of us” kits: HyperCard, Automator, Scratch and so on. Each, at its debut, was hailed as a breakthrough. Each promised the dawn of a new era. And not a single one wound up delivering the idiot-proof, drag-and-drop software-creation process they promised. It may well be that “programming for nonprogrammers” is simply an oxymoron.
A meta-network of the University of Maine
(@Jon I’m confused by the posted quote, as it doesn’t seem be from the NY Times article that is found by clicking the feed link…)
That said, the quote and article are a bit fatiguing… Striking down the free tool based on 3rd party embellishments (“hailed as a breakthrough”?) is unwarranted; looking at the Android App Inventor website (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about), it seems pretty humble and even includes a long thank you list of contributors and past open source projects used as inspiration.
Remember, this is a 20% time project, a phenomenon that should be encouraged. 20% prompts employers to ask: What volunteer efforts were organized? What risky new experiments were released? What contributions to the public domain were made?
I’m with you, Craig. David Pogue is a good reviewer of gadgets, but this review (and more tellingly, his comments about Scratch) makes it seem that he’s completely lacking in programming literacy and is not particularly interested in changing that fact.
Not that I expect every new media practitioner to be an ace programmer. But if you’re going to go to France, you learn some French–not enough to deliver a perfect speech, but enough to navigate the streets and get your meaning across to others.
And if the New York Times is like most big-city newspapers, it works its staff 70+ hours per week with little time leftover for vacations, much less for self-determined projects they get paid to do.
(The quote was from the second page of the review, which you can get by clicking “next page” at bottom.)