Hello everyone, I came to this site for this problem specifically because I know what a knowledgeable and helpful community it is.
I am a freshman in college right now, and as part of my entrepreneurship class me and a small group of guys are trying to build our own startup. Specifically, we are thinking to build a smartphone app. This is going to be mainly for educational purposes, we're not trying to make a million-dollar idea.
The app we were thinking of was a simple lockscreen app that helped people who feel they spend too much time on their phones. This lockscreen would lock a person out of their phone if they spend too much time texting/facebook browsing/gaming or other "waste of time" type things on their phone. I won't go too far into the details of our design idea.
Anyways, we've been looking for a platform to build this app on since we collectively and admittedly know very little about programming. A drag and drop type software would work best where we can learn as we go. We looked at appery.io, but that didn't seem to have a structure for something to actually change the lockscreen of a phone. Any advice/suggestions for platforms to build this type of app on? If any more information is needed, I'll gladly respond as soon as possible. Thanks.
Manipulating the lock screen might be tricky, especially if you're unfamiliar with programming. But stick to one platform (i'd say your only real choice is Android), and hack at at it blindly if you're feeling ambitious.
I think that if you want to start of straight of with programming you need to understand the basics of code. There are loads of guides out there to help you get started with your desired programming language and platform of choice. I for example use Bob Tabor a lot for Windows development and Pluralsight of java/android. There are of course lessons made on youtube and tottaly fine.
I find XAML with C# on windows phone to be the fastest and easiest language to make an app on. Of course the Windows Phone isn't really that popular so it might be something to overlook :P
But yeah, without some knowledge of Java or C# then programming an app might get a bit difficult for you, but if you study hard and take your time with it then anything is possible!