MIT App Inventor (App Inventor or MIT AI2) is a high-level block-based

visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS), also known as diagrammatic programming, graphical programming or block coding, is a programming language that lets users create computer program, programs by ...

, originally built by Google and now maintained by the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT). It allows newcomers to create computer applications for two operating systems: Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, which, , was in beta testing. It is free and open-source 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 or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

. It's target is primarily children and students studying

computer programming Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...

, similar to Scratch. The web interface consists of a graphical user interface (GUI) very similar to Scratch and

StarLogo StarLogo is an agent-based simulation language developed by Mitchel Resnick, Eric Klopfer, and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and Scheller Teacher Education Program in Massachusetts. It is an extension of ...

, allowing users to drag-and-drop visual objects (blocks) to create an application that can be tested on Android and iOS devices and compiled to run as an Android app. It uses a companion mobile app named MIT AI2 Companion providing live testing and debugging. App Inventor provides integration with different online services, such as

Google Sheets Google Sheets is a spreadsheet application and part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. Google Sheets is available as a web application; a mobile app for: Android, iOS, and as a desktop application on Googl ...

and

Firebase Firebase was a company that developed backend software. It was founded in San Francisco in 2011 and was incorporated in Delaware. In 2014, Firebase was bought by Google. Its name continues as a set of backend cloud computing services and ...

. When creating App Inventor, Google drew upon significant prior research in educational computing, and work done within Google on online development environments.

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 an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science and engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Tec ...

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 Code.org is a non-profit organization and educational website founded by Hadi and Ali Partovi, aimed at K-12 students who specialize in computer science. The website includes free coding lessons and other resources. The initiative also targets s ...

), 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 software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. Open Blocks visual programming is closely related to

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 MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

's Lifelong Kindergarten Group led by

Mitchel Resnick Mitchel Resnick (born June 12, 1956) is an American computer scientist. He is the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, and is the founder of Scratch. , Resnick serves as head ...

. 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. I ...

, a blocks editor that runs within a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application 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 scr ...

. 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 Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

, or Universal Serial Bus (

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

). In addition to this the user may use an "on computer" emulator available for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

MacOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

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