What is the best software to use to create Android apps? I'd prefer something that costs money to purchase, as opposed to free software with ads. This is for use by precocious elementary school age kids in a home school environment.

I know nothing about creating apps. Something simple and fun to begin would be great.

Thank you for your help.

I'm not aware of any 'drag and drop' development tools for mobile devices.

The problem with trying to write for Apple (ios) and Android devices is they each use a different language. Apple requires learning Objective-C (or their new language, Swift). Objective-C is about as weird a language as I have ever seen, and don't recommend it. I have no experience with Swift. Either way, you'll need a Mac with X-Code installed to write apps.

If you're targeting Android, you'll need to learn Java, and use a tool like Android Studio, a free download.

There are cross-platform tools, such as Xamarin. Many people have had good luck using Xamarin, but I've tried three times now (although with earlier versions of the software), and all three times, I've had to uninstall it because it was a resource pig.

A popular way to write apps now is to use a tool such as PhoneGap, where you write applications using JavaScript (a very easy language to learn), and which can then be run on both IOS and Android platforms. You will still need a Mac and X-Code to develop for IOS regardless of what tool you use.

Perhaps there are easier methods of app development now, but a few years ago, when I was writing some Android apps, this was what was available.

Good luck!

The official Android SDK? I think they call it "Android Studio" now. Not just free-ware, I think it's actually open source. No ads.

You're going to have to get your hands dirty with the code pretty much regardless of the IDE you use, but the tools Google supplies includes a tutorial that starts waay back at the beginning. I think the only thing that's really drag and drop in AS is the user interface design setup.


What are you trying to teach? Coding, patience, or trying to get them interested in cool sciencey stuff?

If the former, I'd honestly go with something like an Arduino. Official Uno boards are about $30/pop (you can always find clones for far cheaper, though you run the risk of getting one with a counterfeit USB controller), and they are REALLY forgiving. The language is C with a few odds and ends changed (pointers apparently aren't a thing any more as every time I've tried to use them the compiler freaks out), and while there's no simple drag-and-drop interface there's a vast number of shields you can throw on top to add various types of functionality.

There's an IDE called 12Blocks that might be able to do what I'm assuming you want to do (teach the kids programming), but I've never used it.

As to patience, ALL coding will teach that at one point or another; certainly when you're learning the quirks of whatever compiler you chose to work with (no two are alike, and you can't trust the line markers where it says the problem is - sometimes it's above, sometimes below).

If you're trying to get them excited, look at the Lego Mindstorms sets. It's basically a repackaged and slightly polished version of what MIT has been providing to summer camps and schools since I was in grade school. I haven't messed with it in over 20 years, but if the IDE hasn't gone really sucky then it'll be Lego robots programmed via the icon-based programming language.

Investigate the Kano. https://kano.me. It’s pretty much a packaged Rasberry Pi, with a Linux distro that has all about learning those sorts of skills. The distro can be downloaded for free. The hardware kit is not shabby, easy to setup, if you need the hardware.

Yes, I forgot about the RPi. I've never used one, mostly because it's more power than I really need, but I have used Arduino products pretty extensively.

Both should do nicely, but I recall the Arduino having been designed specifically with novices in mind. Still, both are solid choices.

I had originally intended to ask questions related to using arduino, so you guys did a great job answering my question. The starting point for this involved an app making app available on google play I've been asked about. Learning code is the best way to do this, because anything less and they will get bored quickly.

I think the students ultimately will benefit most from a maker approach using raspberry pi and arduino. I was impressed by a presentation given last year by a guy from one of the groups in MIT's media lab.

MIT App Inventor

http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/get-started.html

MicroSoft Visual Studio 2017 is free. It comes with a SDK (called Xamarin) that allows code to be compiled to either iOS or Android. It might be a bit advanced for elementary school age.

Edited To Add:

Just thought of something... I set up a website with my granddaughters (7 and 8). The site adjusts itself to screen size (desk/lap top, phone, tablet) and it was really easy. (I can write web pages but mine suck. It's more of an art than a science) We did it on GoDaddy just because that was the first thing that came to mind. It will cost you a bit to register the url but it's not much. GoDaddy also charges for hosting the site but it's relatively cheap too. The good thing is the kids can keep adding content to the site as time goes on. They can also show it off to their friends.

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Originally posted by vulrath:
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If you're trying to get them excited, look at the Lego Mindstorms sets. It's basically a repackaged and slightly polished version of what MIT has been providing to summer camps and schools since I was in grade school. I haven't messed with it in over 20 years, but if the IDE hasn't gone really sucky then it'll be Lego robots programmed via the icon-based programming language.

Ha! After a lot of frustration I’ve just installed the SNOBOL4 programming language on my Mac. For the kinds of things I do nowadays (manipulating and extracting info from text files), SNOBOL4 is the best language choice for me. Both ICON and SNOBOL4 were developed by Ralph Griswold while he worked at Bell Labs.

Actually, I installed SPITBOL, which is a newer version of SNOBOL4. It’s compiled, so executes faster than SNOBOL4, which is interpreted.

SNOBOL4 is an ancient language (has GOTOs). But I’ve seen many poorly-organized programs written in structured languages, and many well-organized programs written in unstructured languages with GOTOs.

It’s been 30 years since I’ve programmed in SNOBOL4, so I’ll be spending some time working through tutorials.