Yesterday’s post talked about some programmer training for people who need to find new careers for a variety of reasons. Up next, perhaps, people who are ready to be retired but need to keep their minds working or be empowered to create things? At the coffee shop where I work, a regular customer – a photographer of advancing years who just got his first smartphone – routinely chats with me about how he wishes he could have learned to code while he was recovering from surgery a couple of years ago. He thinks it would be incredible to be teaching actual programming, not just how-to-turn-on-your-new-Mac, in retirement communities, rehabilitation centers, and nursing homes.

I’m with him – couldn’t Scratch be powerful not just for people who are too young to have learned to type but for people whose fingers are no longer dexterous enough? I’d like to try an Hour of Code with people who feel like the world no longer has time for them.