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Actually, if you use Processing with Android mode, it's pretty easy to create a simple app. I made something with circles falling down the screen that you have to tap and they explode in a nice satisfying particle explosion (it was mainly to test and demonstrate the surprising addictiveness of even such a simple game feature). This took about an hour, starting from a clean Processing install, including having to select and install (checkbox + button) the Android mode and writing about 50 lines of code. In all fairness, I'm already quite familiar with graphics programming with Processing, but even that is super easy, I teach it to kids starting from age 10-11 (if they're clever and curious enough).

But these kids, the clever and curious ones, they'll find this on their own too, and truly many more cool and free things to create stuff with online. A few years back, they were all over these free github student developer packs, especially the credits for a Digital Ocean droplet server, which they used to host sites, minecraft servers (IIRC) or Discord bots.




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