The App Inventor is/was "OK", but the future of it is questionable. Google is shutting it down. MIT is going to do something with it though. The way it is with Google everything is online, that may or may not be a good thing. It also seemed to be a bit limited in what you could do, IMHO. Kind of like using a "site builder" for a web site.

Have you seen B4A?
http://www.basic4ppc.com/index.html
I am really liking it. One of the nice features is the ability to debug on a device over your lan.

If you do decide to go with B4A use coupon code "bovvkr" to get %50 off the enterprise edition.