Comparison of App Inventor 2 and Java in creating personal applications for Android on example of a Notepad

Nowadays, there is a common tendency to seek simpler and faster solutions that could be used in a process of software development. At the same time two other trends can be observed - rapid increase of mobile applications popularity and introducing IT concepts to non-IT specialists. This is why App Inventor 2 is one of the tools that software development community is interested in. The goal of this paper is to verify the possibility of using App Inventor as a tool for creating personal applications and compare it with possibilities given by Java, which is a native environment for Android platform. Comparison was based on application for managing personal text notes which was created in both solutions. The application had the same layout as well as analogical code, and it was the subject of performance tests followed by a survey. Performance test revealed that both implementations provided efficiency which is good enough for everyday use and small size personal applications. Survey participants preferred application built in Java due to its better responsiveness and visual appearance. Concluding, current shape of App Inventor, makes it useless for professionals, but useful for non-IT specialists for creating personal applications