MIT App Inventor is a web application integrated development environment originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It allows newcomers to

computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...

to create application software (apps) for two operating systems (OS): Android, and iOS, which, , is in final beta testing. It is free and open-source software released under dual licensing: a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, and an Apache License 2.0 for the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

. It uses a graphical user interface (GUI) very similar to the programming languages Scratch (programming language) and the StarLogo, which allows users to drag and drop visual objects to create an application that can run on Android devices, while an App-Inventor Companion (the program that allows the app to run and debug on) that works on iOS running devices are still under development. In creating App Inventor, Google drew upon significant prior research in educational computing, and work done within Google on online development environments. App Inventor and the other projects are based on and informed by

constructionist learning Constructionist learning is the creation by learners of mental models to understand the world around them. Constructionism advocates student-centered, discovery learning where students use what they already know, to acquire more knowledge.Ales ...

theories, which emphasize that programming can be a vehicle for engaging powerful ideas through active learning. As such, it is part of an ongoing movement in computers and education that began with the work of

Seymour Papert Seymour Aubrey Papert (; 29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificia ...

and the MIT Logo Group in the 1960s, and has also manifested itself with

Mitchel Resnick Mitchel Resnick (born June 12, 1956) is Lego Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. , Resnick serves as h ...

's work on

Lego Mindstorms Lego Mindstorms is a hardware and software structure which develops programmable robots based on Lego building blocks. Each version includes computer Lego bricks, a set of modular sensors and motors, and Lego parts from the Technic line to ...

and StarLogo. App Inventor also supports the use of cloud data via an experimental Firebase Realtime Database component.

History

The application was made available through request on July 12, 2010, and released publicly on December 15, 2010. The App Inventor team was led by

Hal Abelson Harold Abelson (born April 26, 1947) is the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a fellow of the Institute ...

and Mark Friedman. In the second half of 2011, Google released the source code, terminated its server, and provided funding to create ''The MIT Center for Mobile Learning'', led by App Inventor creator Hal Abelson and fellow MIT professors Eric Klopfer and Mitchel Resnick. The MIT version was launched in March 2012. On December 6, 2013 (the start of the Hour of Code), MIT released App Inventor 2, renaming the original version "App Inventor Classic" Major differences are: * The ''blocks editor'' in the original version ran in a separate Java process, using the ''Open Blocks'' Java library for creating visual blocks programming languages and programming App Inventor Block Editor

Open Blocks is distributed by MIT's ''Scheller Teacher Education Program'' (STEP) and is derived from master's thesis research by Ricarose Roque. Professor Eric Klopfer and Daniel Wendel of the Scheller Program supported the distribution of Open Blocks under an

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...

. Open Blocks visual programming is closely related to StarLogo TNG, a project of STEP, and Scratch, a project of the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

's Lifelong Kindergarten Group led by

. App Inventor 2 replaced Open Blocks with

Blockly Blockly is a client-side library for the programming language JavaScript for creating block-based visual programming languages (VPLs) and editors. A project of Google, it is free and open-source software released under the Apache License 2.0. It ...

, a blocks editor that runs within a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

. The MIT AI2 Companion app enables real-time debugging on connected devices via

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

, or Universal Serial Bus ( USB). In addition to this the user may use an "on computer" emulator available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

MacOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

Spin-offs

In June 2018, a baked version of App Inventor 2 called Kodular was launched. It is promoted as an 'improved' and more modern version of App Inventor 2.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2010 software App Inventor Integrated development environments Massachusetts Institute of Technology software Mobile software programming tools Visual programming languages Programming languages created in 2010

History

Spin-offs

See also

References

External links