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

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


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For the experiment, Patrick chose a young man of about 28 years old (denoting him “The Journeyman Hacker” until he finds out his real name). The point is this: Patrick offers the hacker apprentice two options to choose from: either he gives him a hundred dollars or the opportunity to learn how to program: three JavaScript tutorials, a cheap laptop, and an hour of daily help in classes. Patrick McConlog has written about this in great detail on his blog .

Patrick's post about the experiment was widely sold on the American Internet - not least because of criticism. American bloggers didn’t like that if you chose the Journeyman Hacker money, he would confirm the justice of his life as a homeless person. On the other hand, Patrick McConlog was compared with Professor Higgins from “Pygmalion” B. Shaw, who, as an experiment by making a real English lady out of a simple flower girl, later almost broke her life. An example of a critical note: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Offer a jerk. (Give a man a fish, and he will be fed all day. Suggest to teach him to program - and you will be a scum).

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


Right choice.

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