Learn to Code, Part 13
A young professional offers a homeless man a chance to learn computer coding
This is Part 13 of a series in which I explore politics and class in America through the prism of technology. In short, until recently I was pretty much computer illiterate. Now I am learning to code. I’ll be updating my journey here on a regular basis. It starts from the beginning. Please subscribe, for free.
Trading Places?
“Please believe me when I say, it is very hard to carry these messages.”
- Patrick McConlogue, the son of the president of a major insurance company.
In August of 2013, a twenty-one-year-old named Patrick McConlogue posted a short blog onto a platform called Medium. His blog had only a dozen subscribers and he’d posted only a few times prior, exclusively on the topic of his Christian faith. Seemingly on a whim, he wrote that he was going to approach a homeless man he’d been observing for a few minutes at a time while on his daily walk to work at a tech startup and offer him the choice between accepting a hundred dollars in cash, or learning how to code. McConlogue determined he would use his spare time teaching the man he’d selected, but hadn’t yet spoken to. This would be his way of “giving back,” he wrote.
His post was clunky. The title, “Finding the unjustly homeless and teaching them to code,” was at once oddly specific, ominous, and presumptive. How did he know the guy was unjustly homeless, for example? It was a scant 350 words, and outlined his plan to approach this stranger, while also touching on the issues of freewill, self-determination, and social caste. Given the constraint of its length combined with its sweeping ambition, it was obviously very disjointed and poorly delivered. He divided his plan, as if a corporate proposal, into three Steps.
“Step 1 - Drive.” McConlogue describes seeing his homeless subject in the park and delves into some existential mixed-metaphorical musings, writing, "It’s that feeling you get when you know the waiter, the cashier, the janitor is in the wrong place. This is my attempt to fix one of those lost pieces.”
He then gives a wistful account of this man who, “Lives by the Hudson. He is young, maybe 28, I will call him “The Journeyman Hacker” until I discover his true name.”
While his kingmaker fantasy belies an obvious messiah complex and an off-putting sense of privilege, initially most readers, and there would be a lot of them, found McConlogue’s post more bizarre than offensive. Every sentence begged further questions. Why are referring to this guy as a hacker? Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just ask him his name instead of giving him a romantic alias? Are you possibly a serial rapist or murderer? If you want to help this guy, maybe you should ask him what he actually needs, instead of determining a plan for him?
In an anecdote he would later share on CNN and the Today Show, McConlogue then describes seeing the man perform a weight-training exercise in the park, using rocks and chains and other junk to create a makeshift gym, and being convinced, in this moment, that this man was resourceful, and had, as McConolgue put it, “Drive,” and was therefore the subject he pluck out of dismay and take under his wing on his path to great things.
“Step 2 - Patience.” McConlogue writes that he has approached his subject, telling him, “I will come back tomorrow and give you $100 in cash, or I will come back tomorrow and give you three JavaScript books, (beginner-advanced-expert) and a super cheap basic laptop. I will then come an hour early from work each day - when he feels prepared - and teach him to code.” McConlogue’s has a tendency to switch verb tenses at random making him difficult to quote, it’s tempting to wonder if anyone has offered him a choice between a hundred-dollar bill and free grammar lessons.
“Step 3 - Execute.” McConlogue learns that the man’s name is Leo Grand, and writes that Leo has accepted his offer to learn to code instead of taking the money.
Leo Grand ends up being a black man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache and a big asymmetrical clump of matted dreadlocks residing on the left side of his head. He wears big padded DJ style headphones that never come off, and dresses in layers of tattered shirts and jackets. He tells people that he is homeless by choice and that he has never been diagnosed with a mental illness. A few years ago, he had a job as an insurance salesman at Met Life, and was priced out of his neighborhood with the construction of a major condo complex, he says. There is usually more to the story than that. Sane, employed, reasonably sober people do not find themselves on the street when a new housing development goes up. In fact, there’s frankly a big unexplained gap between the two events and how they are even connected. Leo has a detached look, a thousand-yard stare intermittently interrupted by a sporadic darting of his eyes. He seems harmless, but not neurotypical.
For whatever it matters, Leo Grand is a character in this story, and that character is that of the Homeless Man. Does he hear voices? Could this have been avoided? Would this be all that much different if he were sitting on a couch in an apartment doing nothing, thinking incongruous thoughts, out of our view? Has he discovered some source of purpose we participants in the economy aren’t aware of? We don’t know. It’s a mystery. But who doesn’t look out of their car window at these people sometimes and wonder these things? It’s compelling. He’s a good character.
McConlogue would soon overnight a laptop via currier to the homeless Leo, according to him, sent to an address that read simply, “Leo.” He also sent three coding books on JavaScript, as well as a solar charger for the computer. Why would you overnight a package to someone you walk by every day? It’s unclear. But McConlogue’s actions are routinely unexplained, if not unexplainable. It’s best not to get bogged down in details. All of this information is coming from McConlogue’s writing. He hasn’t responded to multiple requests to clarify anything. We’ll have to decipher it through layers of language, motivation, and his own objectivity about himself.
For the next few months, McConlogue will stop by Leo’s encampment on his way to work and tutor him on the basics of computer coding for one hour. Eventually the two of them will become business partners and McConlogue will become more and more convinced that his hands are resemble those of God.
To Be Continued in Part 14.