Purpose

TouchDev was created to simplify and democratize the coding process, making it more accessible for beginners and individuals with disabilities. It started as a small project aimed at addressing the challenges of traditional coding interfaces, which are often syntax-sensitive and not easily accessible on mobile devices.

Problem and Need

Coding and application development skills have become essential in today's digital world. However, the traditional method of coding through typing obscure commands using a hypersensitive syntax is often challenging and even intimidating. Recent studies in the literature have shown that syntax remains a significant barrier to novice computer science students in the field. While this syntax barrier is known to exist, whether and how it varies across programming languages has not been carefully investigated

In recent years, visual drag-and-drop coding interfaces have emerged, allowing individuals to code by dragging blocks of code rather than typing out coding commands. The most popular of these is Scratch, a block-based visual programming language aimed primarily at children as an educational tool . Microsoft’s MakeCode, released in 2020, is another major visual programming IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that includes options to convert visual code blocks to text-based programming languages (JavaScript or Python) , though it is still aimed at education and not full-fledged application development. Unity and Unreal IDEs also include visual programming options, and these are real development tools, but they are also much more complex and do not greatly increase accessibility to application development.

Broad access to application development is further limited by the fact that text-based coding is unavailable on the most popular type of personal computing device in the world – the smartphone. To the best of our knowledge, there are absolutely no smartphone-targeted IDEs. Neither Scratch, nor MakeCode, nor any other visual programming environment works on a smartphone. Thus, software development is limited to those able to afford a laptop or desktop computer.

There is a need for alternative approaches to make coding and application development more accessible to a broader range of individuals on a broader range of devices.