The book was 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 was designed for absolute beginners and is also useful for programmers looking to add App Inventor to their programming arsenal. The book has been used in many K-12 and college courses
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.