Is Google App Inventor A Gateway Drug Or A Doomsday Device For Android?

When you first look at Google App Inventor for Android , it may not look like much. That is to say, it's ugly. But as with many Google services, beneath a layer of homeliness, there appears to be much more under the surface. In this case, it could be a very big gateway drug for Android app development. Or is it a Doomsday device that will muck up native app development on the platform? The service, unveiled tonight in the New York Times , is basically a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) tool for app development on the Android platform. Instead of having to learn code (in Android's case, Java), App Inventor is a piece of software that allows you to drag and drop certain elements common to many apps to build a mobile app from scratch.