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Google Pulls Plug On Programming For the Masses
theodp writes "Google has decided to pull the plug on Android App Inventor, which was once touted as a game-changer for introductory computer science. In an odd post, Google encourages folks to 'Get Started!' with the very product it's announcing will be discontinued as a Google product. The move leaves CS Prof David Wolber baffled. ' In the case of App Inventor,' writes Wolber, 'the decision affects more than just your typical early adopter techie. It hurts kids and schools, and outfits like Iridescent, who use App Inventor in their Technovation after-school programs for high school girls, and Youth Radio's Mobile Action Lab, which teaches app building to kids in Oakland California. You've hurt professors and K-12 educators who have developed new courses and curricula with App Inventor at the core. You've hurt universities who have redesigned their programs.' Wolber adds: 'Even looking at it from Google's perspective, I find the decision puzzling. App Inventor was a public relations dream. Democratizing app building, empowering kids, women, and underrepresented groups — this is good press for a company continually in the news for anti-trust and other far less appealing issues. And the cost-benefit of the cut was negligible-believe it or not, App Inventor was a small team of just 5+ employees! The Math doesn't make sense.'"
You can tell the author is a professor. The National Science Foundation requires that there be an "outreach" component to research, so grant proposals always include a patronizing paragraph about how the proposed work will involve and/or improve-the-lives-of women and disadvantaged schoolchildren from the inner cities. Of course, none of this ever actually happens; they hardly bother to teach the competent undergrads at their own institutions, let alone 17-year-olds who still can't read. That would be a distraction from writing the next proposal. Nevertheless, because this kind of writing is so incentivised, eventually professors end up doing it everywhere whether they're trying to or not. Like here.
Every time you construct a game with monetary incentives -- like academic research -- people figure out how to win it. Unfortunately, the behaviors that do this usually aren't the ones you actually wanted to promote.