The book is written by USF Professor David Wolber, along with three of the original creators of App Inventor: MIT's Hal Abelson, Mills Professor and Google Engineer Ellen Spertus and Google Engineer Liz Looney. The book is designed for absolute beginners and is also useful for programmers looking to add App Inventor to their programming arsenal. The book is used in many K-12 and college courses, often in conjunction with the Course-in-the-Box.

About the Book

The first section of the book is organized by content-- apps you might want to build-- instead of topic names like "conditionals" or "iteration" that are less inviting to beginners. You'll be led through the creation of twelve successively more complex apps that you can build and customize. Start from the top and go in succession, or if you're feeling adventurous jump right to an app you want to build. Of course you'll learn a bunch of programming topics, like "conditionals", along the way, but the learning is snuck in while you're having fun!

The second section, the "Inventor's Manual" follows a more traditional topic-by-topic organization. These chapters explains programming and computer science concepts in layperson's terms. If you're more inclined to a topic-by-topic flow, you can start with Chapter 14. Or you can jump to any of the conceptual chapters when you needs specific information to finish an app you're building.

Many thanks to Cayla Shaver, USF CS student, for her work on converting AI1 materials to AI2

The chapters in pdf form are provided below but please purchase the book to support the authors and the work at appinventor.org.

Book Contents