Category Archives: General

General

appinventor.pevest.com server is back online, 18 Jan 2016

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The server that hosts the appinventor.pevest.com virtual server suffered an outage late on January 17th, continuing into early January 18th. The Internet Service Provider that hosts the server has restored service. From their note to me, it seems there may have been a denial of service attack on their infrastructure.

I was in the midst of writing a new tutorial on creating “pretty user interface” components in App Inventor; that tutorial was lost in the outage. Not as bad as it sounds as the code and illustrations were all saved – I just need to rewrite the text.

General, Programming Method, Software, STEM Education

Writing Android apps in Javascript

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Another way to develop apps for Android is to write apps in the Javascript program scripting language (note – Javascript is not related to Java, in spite of the similar name). By using a special platform called Cordova, it is possible to package Javascript programs into a self contained Android .apk file that runs on the Android OS.

Even better – it is possible to package your Javascript app, using Cordova, into forms that run on iOS (iPhones and iPad) and Windows Phone too!

Continue reading Writing Android apps in Javascript →

General, History, Programming Method, STEM Education

Graphical programming and robotics-the tools get better and easier

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MIT App Inventor is a “graphical programming language” in that we assemble programs by clicking and dragging symbols on screen, interactively, rather than writing our programs as text.

This weekend, FIRST Robotics kicks off its 2016 season. Students will design, construct, test and deploy a complex robotic system to meet the 2016 competition challenge (to be unveiled on Saturday).

The robot control system may be programmed in C++, Java, National Instrument’s LabView, RobotBuilder and/or GRIP.

Continue reading Graphical programming and robotics-the tools get better and easier →

General, History, STEM Education

Do you need to use a “real programming language” to create useful applications?

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Do you need to use a “real programming language” to create useful applications?

No!

The history of programming begins long ago with the toggling of switches on a console to “program” a system. This primitive method advanced to the use of short text instructions called “assembly language”, which was then followed by programming languages such as Fortran and others.

In the past couple of decades, “real software” was often written in C/C++, Java or C#. Today, “real software” is written in PHP, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Python, VBA and other new programming languages and support libraries.

Yet there remains an attitude that real software is not real unless its written in a traditional programming language (Java, for example). There is a joke, especially among hardware designers, that “real programmers program in solder”!

So what is a “real programming language”? Realistically, any programming language or system that enables you to deliver a software project that meets the customer needs and requirements is a “real programming language”.

Which gets us to the main point – MIT App Inventor is a real programming language – it is just a different way of programming than that used by “traditional” solutions. Do not let others tell you that App Inventor is not real programming! (But it is more fun!)

Documentation, General

New – e-book corrections page with updates, fixes

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I have set up a page to collect any corrections to my e-books. If you find issues in the books, post a comment here on the blog (http://appinventor.pevest.com) or on my App Inventor 2 Facebook page.

Todd F. found an odd set of sample blocks code images in Chapter 3 of App Inventor 2 Databases and Files (1st edition Revision “A”-see page 2 for the revision level).

I inadvertently inserted two incorrect blocks code samples at the very end of Chapter 3. The correct images are show here.

Any future bugs in the text will be noted on the E-book Corrections page and rolled in to the next e-book update. If you spot any problems, please leave us a comment on any page here on the blog or on our Facebook page – I get notified each time a comment is posted.

Update on Google Books Version

The Google Books e-book version of Volume 2 and Volume 3 has been stuck in their “processing” system for about 5 weeks. I contacted their support staff today and there is an unknown problem with the epub format file (a file used to describe an e-book) for these titles. I am looking into that and hope that it can be fixed soon.