Finding the unjustly homeless and teaching them to code | Hacker News Reader

Finding the unjustly homeless and teaching them to code

medium.com

15 pointschrisdinn5 comments

This is blogpost demonstrates everything wrong with the Silicon Valley mentality and is actually quite insulting. I hope it's sarcasm.

Programming is not a magical cure to all of life's problems. In time, it will be just as necessary a skill as writing is today, and it will pay just as much (which is to say, very little for most, and very well for a few). The $100 means more to the homeless guy than 3 javascript textooks he can't sell, and probably can't read once night hits, and which he almost certainly can't put into practice because he lacks a computer.

Most homeless folks' biggest problem is not their lack of employment, but that they usually suffer from severe mental disorders or substance dependencies. If they weren't sick, they amost certainly wouldn't be homeless.

Every time I see an inane blogpost like this, I feel like smacking some sense into the overprivileged idiot who wrote it.

It's really quite unbelievable. I was expecting the article to at least be about how the author actually helped someone learn to code. Even then, the title and presentation would seem smug and self-serving to me, but I could overlook that for the feel-good story. However, what's actually written is far worse: this post is being written without the author having approached the man or knowing anything about him at all aside from a superficial judgement of "drive". Then there's the straight-from-a-reality-show choice of $100 versus books and a laptop; but it's okay, because this choice will be offered "without disrespecting him".

I'm all for philanthropy, and it's always great that someone's willing to put their time and money into helping others, but this really comes across as more of an art performance than genuine help. Isn't it basic courtesy to talk to someone before writing a blog post about how you're going to reform their sorry life with your programming teaching skill?

I'm so glad that Mr. McConlogue can tell the justly homeless from the unjustly homeless.

The "unjustly" homeless? WTF? What justifies someone being homeless? The only justification in a reasonable society is that they actively choose to live that lifestyle. Poor life-choices, lack of planning, exposure to addictive substances are not justifications, just excuses for society to dispense with it's duty to care for fellow humans.

I would be curious to know the results of this. There needs to be meetups set up for this purpose. Nowadays in the bay area, there are too many useless networking events, there needs to be more initiatives that actually make a difference.

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