Give the man a fish and he will be full all day. Invite him to learn programming, and he ...

New York programmer Patrick McConlog is conducting an interesting social experiment. Every day, going to work around the city, he sees numerous homeless people, and involuntarily asks himself the question: what if many of these people are not in their place and could live more worthily under other circumstances? He decided to put experience to find out.



For the experiment, Patrick chose a young guy about 28 years old (designating him “The Journeyman Hacker” until he finds out his real name). The bottom line is this: Patrick offers the "apprentice hacker" two options: either he gives him a hundred dollars, or the opportunity to learn how to program: three JavaScript books, a cheap laptop, and an hour of daily help in class. All this Patrick McConlog wrote in detail on his blog .

Patrick’s post about the experiment spread quite widely on the American Internet - not least because of criticism. American bloggers did not like that if the Journeyman Hacker had chosen the money, he would have confirmed the justice of his life as a homeless man. On the other hand, Patrick McConlog was compared with Professor Higgins from Pygmalion B. Shaw, who, as an experiment, making a real English lady out of a simple flower girl, almost broke her life. An example of a critical note: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Offer to teach a man to code and you're kind of a jerk. (Give the man a fish, and he will be full all day. Offer to teach him to program - and you will turn out to be a scumbag).

Later it became known that The Journeyman Hacker (his real name is Leo)chose programming. For study, he received a Samsung Chromebook (with 3G open to resources like code academy), books “JavaScript for Beginners”, “Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja”, and “Javascript the Good Parts”, as well as a solar battery for the laptop.


Right choice.

We look forward to continuing the story. The experiment has just begun.