Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

NYC Engineer Wants to Help Homeless Man With Software Coding Classes
ABC Yahoo ^ | Aug 23, 2013 | JOANNA STERN

Posted on 08/24/2013 3:52:54 PM PDT by Innovative

McConlogue approached Leo, a 36-year man who lives on the streets of lower Manhattan, on Thursday and gave him two options.

The first was $100 in cash.

The second option on the table was a laptop, three JavaScript books and two months of coding instruction from McConlogue.

Soon, McConlogue will deliver him a Samsung Chromebook with 3G connectivity, three JavaScript books, a solar charger for the laptop and something to conceal the laptop in. He will spend an hour before work every morning teaching him the basics of software coding.

(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: New York
KEYWORDS: classes; computers; engineer; homeless; software
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-44 next last
Sure the guy isn't stupid -- a laptop is worth more than $100.

I can't wait to see if he is still going to be there for the coding classes after he gets the laptop in his possession.

I hope they will do a follow up article on it.

Do you remember, when someone bought a homeless person a pair of boots, then the guy didn't wear it, then it turned out he had several pairs at home, or something along those lines... i.e. he was not homeless.

I found the article: Barefoot man given boots by NYPD officer not homeless on that one.

1 posted on 08/24/2013 3:52:54 PM PDT by Innovative
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Innovative
Step #1 should be get the homeless guy *off* the booze/drugs and/or get him *on* the psych meds he’s supposed to be taking.
2 posted on 08/24/2013 3:55:58 PM PDT by Gay State Conservative (If Obama Had A City It Would Look Like Detroit)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

Lets say he learns coding, who will give him a job without that precious piece of paper?


3 posted on 08/24/2013 3:58:01 PM PDT by Husker24
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

Only takes one do-gooder to mess things up. The original quote was better, but I can’t recall.


4 posted on 08/24/2013 3:58:50 PM PDT by Track9 (hey Kalid.. kalid.. bang you're dead)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

sounds great! anyone can write software!

I don’t know what I wasted for years of college for...

I’ll be sure to call him when I need an advanced algorithm to calculate the change in frequency as a laser scans across the diffraction grating to determine a chemical reaction.


5 posted on 08/24/2013 3:59:15 PM PDT by Mr. K (Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and then Democrat Talking Points.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

I was chatting with a fellow gym rat today. He told me his mother was on welfare and she “earned” her money by trading her EBT card. I asked how and he said, “Well, one of the things is to buy somebody $100 worth of groceries and they give you $50. But there are other ways.” The subject was changed by somebody else and I didn’t ask about the other ways. However, not far from my house is the “EBT Motel.”

The point is, you can’t really help most of these people. They don’t want “help.”


6 posted on 08/24/2013 4:00:14 PM PDT by Gen.Blather
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

Chromebook costs $200.


7 posted on 08/24/2013 4:05:20 PM PDT by AppyPappy (Obama: What did I not know and when did I not know it?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Well an idealistic 23 year old is hardly the type to be a good sifter of humanity as to who is a good candidate for this. But assuming the black man is a good candidate. The 23 year old is going to have to ferry the job candidate to interviews, be his reference the whole 9 yards else its just an exercise in futility, not to mention the hurdles a black man with no degree or equivalent formal educ/experience will have to overcome. IT jobs...programmers/coders are not exactly ripe with either women and blacks.

I applaud the helper, it is truly a gracious deed.
Just hope both sides fulfill what is needed.

Around my area, I just hand out blankets, odds and ends clothes/shoes and food money occassionally to those who really need it and arent’ just standing around collecting up money. The lowest of the low. And the lowest of the low are sometimes so snaggle toothed and grisly that even if they cleaned up, no one would hire them, nor would they be qualified for anything....for these I buy them a beer!


8 posted on 08/24/2013 4:05:40 PM PDT by RBStealth
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: All

The article also had a link to the sw engineer’s blog, where he has documented the story so far and intends to continue.

https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/fee8f3ee97a0

As I said, I can hardly wait...


9 posted on 08/24/2013 4:08:05 PM PDT by Innovative ("Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." -- Vince Lombardi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Gen.Blather

This has happened to me in California.

A late-40s male (white) wearing a Hawaii shirt and cargo shorts approached me in the store (Pavilions, in Santa Clarita) and said he’d buy me groceries worth $150 if I gave him $50 in cash. I shooed him off, thinking he’s insane or mentally ill.

I guess he was playing the same scam.


10 posted on 08/24/2013 4:08:05 PM PDT by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Mr. K

spectroscopy, wrote software for that!


11 posted on 08/24/2013 4:08:54 PM PDT by RBStealth
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

It sounds like the guy means well, but most people don’t have the cognitive tools required to do “programming” with any degree of usefulness.

That often goes unmentioned in public debate. The polite assumption we’re supposed to make is that “anyone can do anything” if they “work hard” or “put their mind to it.”

That’s simply wrong, though. You run into cognitive limits, and that’s that. We recognize this on the margins - we don’t really believe that “anyone can be a mathematician” - it is seen as something that takes a lot of brainpower that many people lack.

But we refuse to look further down the scale at tasks that don’t take as much raw intelligence as abstract math, but which still DO take more than a lot of people have.


12 posted on 08/24/2013 4:11:00 PM PDT by seacapn
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Gay State Conservative

Exactly. Its kind of hard to learn anything, especially if it involves logic, when you have a monkey on your back.


13 posted on 08/24/2013 4:13:16 PM PDT by rbg81
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Mr. K
sounds great! anyone can write software! I don’t know what I wasted for years of college for... I’ll be sure to call him when I need an advanced algorithm to calculate the change in frequency as a laser scans across the diffraction grating to determine a chemical reaction.

I, on the other hand, will call him when I cannot determine how to stop an onmouseover crosssite scripting without employing serverside IIS filtering, or to help me determine why people are getting invalid sessionstates in one IIS Application Pool but not the other, or if I need him to help me defend against a cross-site request forgery without the aid of session number. Also, he can assist me in the creation of object-oriented parameter screen objects that have all the parameter rules imbedded in the object, and that can be used very similar to a repeater.

Thank goodness for the homeless!

14 posted on 08/24/2013 4:13:52 PM PDT by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Gen.Blather

After I graduated from college in the midwest, I moved to California for my first engineering job. Getting an engineering degree is really hard work and your first job out of school never pays much, but you do what you have to to get on the first rung of the ladder.

I went skiing in the Sierras and had the pleasure of sitting next to a guy on the lift who was in his mid 20s, just a couple years older than me. We got to chatting, naturally, about what we do. He was a welfare bum in the winter and summer and worked just enough in the spring to buy a new surfboard and in the fall to buy a new pair of skis and a season lift ticket. During summer and winter he lived off the government teat. After grinding out my engineering degree and working 70 hour weeks, I was ready to chuck him right out of the chair lift onto the rocks below. But I did restrain myself.

I can reliably trace my conservative core to that day (and a couple years later spending seven months in communist China).


15 posted on 08/24/2013 4:16:50 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: ProtectOurFreedom

But I did restrain myself.

_____________________

Too bad. We’re still supporting the moocher, I would bet.


16 posted on 08/24/2013 4:17:59 PM PDT by Chickensoup
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: All

17 posted on 08/24/2013 4:20:14 PM PDT by Innovative ("Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." -- Vince Lombardi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Lazamataz; Mr. K

I could have used him when I was in engineering school when I was coding the Newton-Raphson method to find successively better approximations to the roots of a real-valued functions. He would have been an outstanding tutor, but “Learn Ebonics in 30 Days” would have been a prerequisite to hiring him. Too bad that Stephen Wolfram took all the fun out of solving those problems.


18 posted on 08/24/2013 4:31:41 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Innovative

The one on the left is the software engineer, correct? /s


19 posted on 08/24/2013 4:31:42 PM PDT by Ken522
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Mr. K

You wrote:
++++++++++++
I’ll be sure to call him when I need an advanced algorithm to calculate the change in frequency as a laser scans across the diffraction grating to determine a chemical reaction.
+++++++++++++

In JavaScript? Good luck with that...


20 posted on 08/24/2013 4:31:46 PM PDT by PrairieDawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-44 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson