President Barack Obama is the latest newsmaker to join the challenge to learn to code. The “Coder in Chief” sat down with Code.org — the Seattle non-profit and operator of the Hour of Code event — to become the first president to write a few lines of Javascript.
More than 58 million people worldwide have tried the Hour of Code, according to Code.org. The organization’s goal is to promote the need to learn coding among school-age children, but also to show that anyone can do it. Obama joins others in promoting the cause, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Ashton Kutcher.
While Obama isn’t going to be writing any earth-shattering code anytime soon—he wrote code to create a little box—he is a major promoter of Code.org, saying in their video: “Don’t just play on your phone, program it.”
The organization’s goal is reach 100 million people this year. Led by Seattle entrepreneur Hadi Partovi, Code.org reports that its campaign on Indiegogo has raised more than $4 million of its $5 million goal, with under a week left to go. The funds will be used to “bring computer science to 25,000 new classrooms by 2016.”
