Android Application Development without Coding

Android application development is becoming a critical element of any systems engineering and especially software engineering architecture today. So what technology do you use to develop Android applications for the mobile and emerging tablet market segments?

In the past few years, Android development is centered on Java/Dalvik, Python, HTML5 (Javascript, CSS3, HTML5), C++, and any other web development languages and systems that support mobile clients. In today's IT environment, yet another platform and yet another set of APIs, SDKs, and framework is not really desirable to me. It is just more to learn, more issues to uncover, more workarounds, more techniques, etc. The folks over at Google Labs have the same viewpoints and have created something interesting.

Google Labs has released and is experimenting with a new lightweight browser-based development platform called AppInventor which leverages underlying Java technology and does not require any coding in our traditional understanding of programming. How is this possible? It uses a new metaphor for application development I first observed in Scratch. Instead of coding in the traditional sense using drag-n-drop, code snippets, classes, and XML etc., Scratch implements a jigsaw puzzle like paradigm for defining application logic. Visual components are placed onto the application in the traditional drag-n-drop paradigm, but the application logic, behaviors, and other aspects normally coded in snippets are all defined using visual jigsaw like building blocks.

I have played with Scratch a few years ago when my son was in Kindergarten and saw its potential. A few years later, I can see its practical application in AppInventor and the need to experiment with code-free application development for Android platform. I recently created my first sets of Android applications using AppInventor and can vouch for the no-coding paradigm is a viable software development model for simple to mildy complicated applications. The next few months is going to be fun working with AppInventor!