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Comment by ddebernardy | Hacker News Reader

My hat goes to the old lady, but frankly, if you feel the need to code and market something at age 82 then the odds are you're either struggling to make ends meet, which might warrant giving a cold hard look at the pension system in place, or you don't have and never have had much of a life outside of work - no kids or grand-(grand-)children, no hobbies, etc.

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There's quite a common phenomenon where when people stop working, say through forced retirement, they die pretty soon afterwards. It's the same reason why having time on your hands leads to depression. People want to do things and feel useful.

She's building free apps to help the elderly, it would be a reasonable assumption to assume that she's not making a living off it.

The tech industry is full of people who don't need to work. Elon Musk could have comfortably retired in 1999 after Compaq bought Zip2. Would the world be a better place if he had done so?

It's an unfortunate reality that many older Japanese people have no choice but to keep working; with that said, I applaud anyone who chooses to use their retirement to learn new skills, explore new opportunities and keep making a contribution to society.

In retirement people pick up hobbies, where in the article does it say, she's using the proceeds to pay for rent?

These are terrible assumptions coming from a very limited view of the possible circumstances.

ouch, that's kind of harsh. You make a lot of assumptions.

The idea that someone would do work because they enjoy it seems entirely foreign to the parent. Although I suppose that is a more western perspective as well. Sure we have that whole "do what you love" bit, but there seems to be an appreciation of "craftsmanship" for lack of a better term that the Japanese have and we seem to have largely forgotten.

Or, she was just bored. Projecting the capitalist point of view on old japanese people is very naive.

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