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Comment by antichaos | Hacker News Reader

Come on, Google. Software development is not for everyone. Making it easy for amateurs to write crappy HelloPurr apps brings no good to the Android eco-system. Focus on building a mobile platform that attracts more professional developers, please.

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What would that statement have looked like 20 years ago? 40? 10?

"Come on PHP, web development is not for everyone. Making it easy for amateurs to write crappy dynamic web sites brings no good to the web"

And, yeah, PHP has made a lot of crappy things possible. But some of those crappy things go on to become good things, and wouldn't have been possible had it not been so easy to get started.

But, it should be! Programming ought to be the new literacy, and the phone, which many already have, is an excellent platform to get started.

Sure, their approach might be amazingly ignorant of history, but you can't fault them for trying.

I think if the apps were made then not put on the market then all would be good, otherwise there will be huge software quality dilution problems. The android market already has enough of a hurdle to jump over because of the countless "Hey, lets try out the android platform and make a few bucks" apps out there.

There are loads of simple programmes on Android/iPhone that are popular (e.g. Fart apps). Simple apps aren't always bad, sometimes they are just what people want. This tools allows the creation of certain kinds of programmes that people want. This is a good thing.

So true. Last weekend I've been hunting for a 1x1 battery status widget. This is (in its basic form) a 'hello world' type of application, so there are maybe 20 or 30 different ones on the app stores. Yet none of them looks good or offers any of the functionality I had on my Palm Treo battery management software. The App Store is a huge dumping ground of all sorts of crappy weekend projects, with a great professional app here and there, but buried among all the thrash. The rating doesn't help, because as soon as people start charging for an app, the bar is raised so much that the only thing commenters and raters do is bitch and complain. I have no idea how to fix this though.

Try "battery left widget". Good one. http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-preinvent-ba...

Thanks, hadn't found this one, will try.

Perhaps some future "professional developers" will be encouraged to get into programming by experiencing a tool such as this early in life.

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