Google is shutting down its popular Grasshopper coding application in June

Google just announced that it will be shutting down its mobile coding application Grasshopper on June 15, 2023. The Android app, which has over 1.6 million installs to date after being launched in 2017, was designed to help people learn to code on their mobile devices.

In addition to the mobile app, the web app “learn.grasshopper.app” will also stop functioning on the same date. While nothing really eases this news, Google has provided users with a few solutions to export their progress beforehand. If you’re a Grasshopper user, you can access your progress export option through the app’s settings page. Additionally, you can copy your code into a separate editor to preserve any work you were doing. Course certificates can be archived by taking screenshots, which seems like a silly solution if you ask me, but whatever.

Google has also offered a list of alternative apps and web apps, including Stack Overflow, FreeCodeCamp.org, Khan Academy, and YouTube among others. These alternative resources have thousands of hours of high-quality coding tutorials to help you improve your coding skills and are suitable for both beginners and advanced coders alike.

Area 120, the incubator responsible for the development of Grasshopper and the team directly responsible for some of Google’s greatest successes, has recently seen many shutdowns across all its projects as a result of Google cutting funding. It’s unfortunate to see such an exceptional company take the brunt of Google’s spending habits and decision-making, but at least the tech giant has stated that’s working to relocate many of Area 120’s employees to other divisions.

It’s a sad day for Grasshopper users, but it is just another day in the Google machine where a large community is shuttered and dispersed based on some high-level decision based solely on the bottom line (money), so you don’t really have much of a choice if you want to continue your learning journey.