Shapeways is a partner for Google’s brand new MadeWithCode initiative aimed at getting more girls excited about coding and computational thinking. What is important about this initiative is that it will broaden the understanding of what can be done with code. Code is not just games or websites. Increasingly it is everything and everywhere (even in a long piece on computational thinking in MotherJones).

So what I am particularly excited about is how this initiative will introduce a many more people to the idea of constructing physical objects through code. This is a key enabler for mass customization and for creating objects on demand (rather than having wasteful warehouses full of stuff that may wind up in a landfill). Shapeways makes this possible and even easy by providing a powerful 3D Printing API and the incredible ShapeJS Javascript Library.

The MadeWithCode bracelet project is built on top of these. Anyone can use the Shapeways API and ShapeJS to create their own customizable or fully code generated objects. This opens the door to amazing possibilities, such as the automated creation of a perfect fit lightweight arm or leg brace instead of a traditional cast. I can’t wait to see what people come up with!