A homeless man learned how to write computer codes and released a mobile app three months later, according to the VentureBeat.com website.
Leo "Journeyman" Grand learned how to program computer codes with the help of Patrick McConlogue who announced on a blog his intention to teach a homeless man to code, the report said.
McConlouge's decision and public announcement on the web received heavy criticism and Netizens accused him of using the plight of a homeless person for self-gratification and attention. McConlogue, a 23-year-old software engineer, wrote "Finding the unjustly homeless and teaching them to code" in Medium, a blogging platform.
McConlogue wrote:
"Every day walking to work in New York City, you will see the homeless. Some mentally gone, some drunk, some just making a wage begging. However, I like to think I can see the few times when it's a wayward puzzle piece. It's that feeling you get when you know the waiter, the cashier, the janitor is in the wrong place-they are smart, brilliant even. This is my attempt to fix one of those lost pieces."
When McConlogue met Grand, McConlogue gave the Journeyman two options -- $100 in cash, or personal code tutoring with three JavaScript books and a basic laptop. Grand chose the second option.
The following months led to a friendship that proved skeptics wrong. For months Grand learned code programming under McConlogue's tutelage, and after three months, the Journeyman released his first mobile app called "Trees for Cars," a mobile carpooling app that connects drivers and riders.
Before ending up in the streets, Grand was an employee at MetLife, but got laid off and had to move out of his apartment in 2001. He was arrested by the police for sleeping in a park bench, his laptop taken, but later released after appeals and support from Netizens. His released was just in time for him to appear in the Today Show.
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