Patrick McConlogue offers to teach homeless man coding The Journeyman Source: Supplied THIS young techie says he just wants to help a homeless man. So why is he copping so much hate? A 23-year-old techie who wrote a blog post about how he would try to help a homeless man has been branded "a 21st century asshole." Patrick McConlogue has come under fire for publicising his plan to try to help a 36-year-old man, who lives on the streets of lower Manhattan, who he passes on his way to work each day. McConlogue wrote on Medium, an invite-only blagging platform, that he would offer the homeless man either $100 cash to buy a few meals or a cheap laptop and three JavaScript books to learn to software coding. 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," he blogged. 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. I pass a homeless man who lives by the Hudson every day on the way to work. He is young, maybe 28, I will call him "The Journeyman Hacker" until I discover his true name. "Before you think this is some weird "fish bowl" experiment, you can just tell when he looks at you that he lost a series of battles." McConlogue said that if "The Journeyman Hacker" accepted the challenge, he would spend an hour before work every morning teaching the homeless man the basics of software coding. Blogs and social media erupted over the weekend to criticise the New York-based tech entrepreneur for the wording of his blog post and his shameless self-promotion. The technology community was particularly scathing of the post titled Finding the unjustly homeless, and teaching them to code . Valleywag called McConlogue "a 21st century asshole Henry Higgins." Betabeat's Jessica Roy wrote that the "homeless are not bit players in your imaginary entrepreneurial novella." Techcrunch editor-in-chief Alexia Tsotsis said McConlogue was "tone-deaf" and that his plan demonstrated "a profound cluelessness about poverty and the disenfranchised." Slate's Matthew Yglesias argued that housing, not coding, is the first step in fixing homelessness. Then, Slate's Will Oremus called him a "naive techie." Meanwhile McConlogue gave interviews and set up a Facebook page to document his "project." The software engineer told The Huffington Post he was shocked his gesture had caused so much controversy. He said in addition to the criticism across the internet and social media, he had also received letters of support. "I think the title is terribly put, because it implies that some homeless people are 'justly homeless'," McConlogue said. Kevin Roose from the New York Magazine called it a "truly ill-conceived social experiment." How will the saga end? Will Journeyman Hacker get a job at Google? Will there be a laptop and three JavaScript books for sale on 58th Street tomorrow? Does McConlogue have a shred of self-awareness? (Surprisingly, sort of - earlier in the post he says, 'I suck at empathy.')," Roose wrote. McConlogue has since posted an update, in which he informs readers that Journeyman Hacker's real name is Leo and that Leo's very knowledgeable about environmental issues. Leo has accepted the challenge. The story will continue here on Medium, or on his new Facebook page which he will take over. Yesterday McConlogue posted on Facebook that Leo's code kit from Amazon had arrived. "Dropping it off in a couple of hours," he wrote. Keep in mind, this is the very beginning of long process. Anything worthwhile takes time, this may have "gone viral" but lets not forget the focus. One man's story, one man's choice, and the internet audience has now made it an amazing opportunity. Thank you everyone for your continued support.