I’m very proud to announce a technology preview of Code on the Go.

My idea for App Dev for All goes back to the early 1970s, when I learned how to program a PDP-8 minicomputer at my high school. There were no textbooks or computer science teachers available. I had to teach myself. Today, there are plenty of people in the world without the resources that I had growing up, but with the same limitations from 50 years ago: curiosity about a topic without any tools, teachers, or textbooks.

In 2016, I developed a serious medical condition. By 2022, I had to retire from a job I really liked. I thought about my parents, who spent 30 years in retirement making the world better. Our religious tradition is that when you die, you won’t be evaluated on how loudly you prayed but on what you did. I’m not religious, but that stayed with me. Stuck in bed for a long recovery, I thought about how to make the world a little bit better.

I don’t know how to solve poverty, provide clean water, or end food insecurity. What I can do is write software. I thought about how software could improve the world. I don’t need to know what kinds of software will help people in different communities the most. If we can make the tools to build software globally accessible, then anyone, anywhere can make what they need. How do you make tech tools available where most people don’t have laptop computers or high-speed internet? By using the computers already in their pockets.

Android phones have about 3/4 of the global market. They’re ubiquitous. But to make an app for Android, you generally need a laptop and internet access. Why not make it possible to build an Android app on an Android phone? That eliminates the need for those expensive resources, opening app development and computer programming more broadly to everyone.

So here we are two years later, with Code on the Go, our offline-first Android-based IDE. The version we released this week is internally called “Dancing Bear,” because even though the bear may seem clumsy, it’s remarkable that the bear can dance at all.* Goal #1 is to show that you can write, debug, build, and share an Android app entirely on your phone without internet. Goal #2 is to get the app into the hands of Android developers who can tell us where the bear’s dancing needs improvement.

In the next major release, Code on the Go will get faster, more stable, and easier to use, with curricula for self-directed learners and educator training materials for classroom teaching. Support for learning Python, C, and C++ will improve. Through our partnership with Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB), Code on the Go will be available globally as a school and community resource. We’re also helping expand access to IIAB resources with an Android app to download local content and a version of IIAB that allows an Android phone to act as a local hotspot.

But this week? We are very, very happy to see our bear dance.

*Forcing a real bear to dance is animal cruelty, which is bad. It is, however, an apt metaphor for Code on the Go’s preview release.