One month after its launch in the App Store, Codeacademy: Hour of Code has gone universal — being optimized for iPad and iPad mini, as well as iPhone and iPod touch.

While all of us aren’t destined to get our heads buried deep in lines of programming languages, chances are that most of us, and especially our children, will benefit from knowing the basics of how the most ubiquitous devices in our world operate.

Despite the current backlash against the “coding for all rhetoric,” teaching kids the basics of programming can’t be a bad thing. Heck, teaching ourselves to code may be a fantastic lead in to a rewarding hobby, a new career path, or both.

That’s the idea behind the “Hour Of Code,” a national initiative set to run December 9 – 15, 2013 that’s designed to take kids through the basics of programming in their schools. This new app from Codeacademy is specifically tailored to the process, so even if your kids (or you!) don’t have a school that’s participating in the Hour of Code, they can still get the benefit.