Good for him. Now, why should we give a shit?
since when should we care about who does what?
sorry but for what I remember, this must be the third attempt to go viral with this crap.
TLDR: another carpooling app.
Yeah. I'm gonna have to agree with you here. I'm all for charity, but in the end, an app is an app. If we want to be truly unbiased, why should we care that the guy who wrote it was homeless? Shouldn't we focus on the quality of the app? And after enough homeless people "learn to code" at what point does this story cease to be newsworthy?
I think the intended intent behind an upvote on these news aggregation sites is that the actor oneself "gives a shit" about the article -- rather than "wants others to 'give a shit'" about the article. Of course, in practice, it's the latter, especially for one's own submissions.
I find your comment pretty harsh, and I think you have a narrow view of the story: it's not about how amazingly innovative this app is, it's about how a man who has nothing but a laptop could learn how to program and release something that is useful for many people.
My question to you is why shouldn't we care about another human being?
imo the problem is that you're so submerged in the industry-driven world that your mind believes the value of a person is based on their capacity to create the next Big Product... it's sad.
Excellent. Instead of just taking other people's money and giving it to someone for no return, an individual actually chose charity, aided the willing without government interference, and "taught a man to fish." Bravo!
Excellent. Instead of looking at the bigger picture that depicts how this isn't a viable option to solve the problems of poverty and homelessness, you co-opt it as a libertarian talking point. Bravo!
This guy most likely would have had the same fate as a majority of the homeless if it wasn't for a select individual who decided to dedicate his time to educate the man on how to write code.
To pretend that this situation is anything other than a reflection on the sad state of affairs.the disadvantaged in this country face, the reality that says if they don't happen to know someone who is willing to dedicate a large chunk of time to adequately prepare them to enter a new profession and provide necessities, they are screwed, is myopic and incredibly self-serving.
There is a reason we have a social safety net, it is because fluff pieces like this cannot be applied to the situation at large, and disadvantaged people tend to fall through the cracks thus have less people in their lives who might help them like this man.
Reading this article and twisting it into a talking point that will be construed as advocacy of dismantling that safety net isn't something to be proud of.
Or, you know, you could come to the exact inverse conclusion:
An sad isolated example where a man helps another man (arbitrarily him, and to the neglect of others in the same condition), instead of our society having standard procedures and programs to help everybody in the same situation.
>Just because society is supposed to do something, does not mean that government is supposed to do that thing.
Why not? Government is the set of people we, society, put in place to do some work for us in an organized fashion.
So if there's something society at large has to do and that is not about individual action, then the government better see to it pronto. That's what people pay taxes for -- so we can have things like roads, bridges, clean water, schools, armies and action to aid the more unfortunate.
>Likely the problem you are so quick to put government in charge of, wouldn't be a problem in the first place if we had a free economy.
Yes, but also if we had free ponies. I don't deal in "what if" scenarios alluding to some perfect state of being that nobody has seen. This is the kind of economy we have, it might get more or less free, but nobody has seen a "free economy" anywhere, and I don't see such a thing coming in any conceivable time frame.
I think you misunderstand what government actually is. Government is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
I have a right to use force in self-defense.
Therefore I have the right to hire a bodyguard to use force in my defense. (In fact it is the same right - delegated.)
Therefore we have the right to elect a sheriff to use force in our defense.
...But I do NOT have the right to beat and rob people.
Therefore, neither do I have any right to hire a bodyguard to beat and rob people.
Therefore, neither does our sheriff have any right to beat and rob people -- even if we voted for him to do so! Because you cannot delegate powers you never had.
Therefore the question isn't whether society should provide social welfare for the needy. Rather, the question is whether we have a moral right to use VIOLENCE to FORCE people to provide social welfare for the needy. (We don't.)
The only time we have a right to use violence is in defense against murderers and thieves. Once we start trying to use it to solve social problems, we end up making those problems worse, not better.
The reason you see poverty in various nations is because they do not have economic freedom and secure property rights. The nations with the worst poverty are the ones with the worst protections of rights. The nations with the lowest poverty are the nations with the best protections of rights. And note: those are also the nations who donate the most money to charity.
Government can never fix poverty by using violence to forcefully redistribute wealth. All that will do is cause worse poverty.
The best a government can do is strongly protect rights and economic freedoms -- then you will have a rich nation, which will not have poverty problems in the first place, and which will easily be able to cover the rest through private charity.
Unfortunately we do not see any governments today that respect rights and freedoms in this way, although some are better than others. But proposed solutions based on "social welfare" will only make those problems worse, not better.
You say that you do not deal in "what if" scenarios -- you say that there is no "perfect state." I agree with this. But behaving more and more like North Korea is not some magical solution either. It just makes things worse.
It's not quite that easy. I can tell you haven't "lived"
enough to know just how simplistic you comment appears.
Let me quess--twenties, a lot of support, and really never
experienced anything horrific?
So how exactly is this sort of charity supposed to solve homelessness and poverty? What about all the mentally ill out on the streets, do we teach them to code and maybe to manufacture their own medications as well? Have libertarians found the solution-for-all-time to mental illness and they just aren't telling anyone?
Is this man even out of poverty at this point? There are hundreds of thousands (millions, maybe, I'm not up on the latest Apple marketing) of apps in the app store and most of them make very little money. This isn't sustainable, this is a puff piece about someone who did something nice for someone else.
Thank you for having the balls to call out immature and idiocentric opinions for what they are.
If people were more willing to do that in real life, we wouldn't have libertarians parading charity over welfare and disaster capitalism over funding relief efforts.
Unfortunately, people can waltz through life espousing selfish and socially harmful opinions and never have to face social repercussions, reinforcing the opinion, thus never having to call them into question.
Libertarians like to think they have a monopoly on rationality, but what they have a simplistic and inherently selfish ideology that values property rights over human life. Thus he is childlike in his view of the world, as it has to fit quaintly into his narrow narrative, and what follows from such story-telling to one's self are the sociopathic beliefs and behaviors inflicted on society.
On one hand this is great, on the other, what does this guy do now? How does this help him? I imagine this helps his self esteem, which is a good thing and a meaningful non-tangible benefit. But it's not as though he can go get a job now. And he still doesn't have a place to live. And I'm not saying the dev who taught Leo to code is somehow in the wrong, I'm genuinely curious what the next step could be for this gentleman.
This isn't actually as rare as is being made out, though good luck to him, once he has an online folio of work sorted he should be able to freelance off this. A lot of people have housing problems during their lives and there are a fair few coders, so it is no surprise that the two sets overlap, especially given the tendency to nomadism. It is amazing what you can do with a cheap laptop and free wifi.
Well, of all the app developers (there are now 1 million apps for iOS alone, so let's say all US developers are 100,000) how many are similar cases? 1? 2? 10?
1 such story in multiple thousands IS rate in my books.
3.5 million people in the US experience homelessness in any given year, I think you would be suprised how many professionals have gone through a period of homelessness. Most people who have gone through housing problems don't tend to advertise the fact in work situations.
I watched the video of him describing the app, and it seems as though he'd have trouble with a job interview. Is that just my impression? Do you disagree?
35 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 186 ms ] threadLeo The Homeless Coder (media-results) (imgur.com) 1 point by Empathenosis 3 days ago | 1 comments | cached > https://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?filt...
> The Real Story of the Homeless Coder (youtube.com) 4 points by danboarder 5 hours ago | 0 comments | cached
those are just the first two pages. Now, My point is : "bravo leo. but enough with this Oprah shit."
IMHO this story is borderline spam.
My question to you is why shouldn't we care about another human being?
imo the problem is that you're so submerged in the industry-driven world that your mind believes the value of a person is based on their capacity to create the next Big Product... it's sad.
Conspiracy theory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6441795
Potential examples:
I'm going to just keep on collecting these links and post it on every instance I see. This will be added as the 7th.This guy most likely would have had the same fate as a majority of the homeless if it wasn't for a select individual who decided to dedicate his time to educate the man on how to write code.
To pretend that this situation is anything other than a reflection on the sad state of affairs.the disadvantaged in this country face, the reality that says if they don't happen to know someone who is willing to dedicate a large chunk of time to adequately prepare them to enter a new profession and provide necessities, they are screwed, is myopic and incredibly self-serving.
There is a reason we have a social safety net, it is because fluff pieces like this cannot be applied to the situation at large, and disadvantaged people tend to fall through the cracks thus have less people in their lives who might help them like this man.
Reading this article and twisting it into a talking point that will be construed as advocacy of dismantling that safety net isn't something to be proud of.
An sad isolated example where a man helps another man (arbitrarily him, and to the neglect of others in the same condition), instead of our society having standard procedures and programs to help everybody in the same situation.
Likely the problem you are so quick to put government in charge of, wouldn't be a problem in the first place if we had a free economy.
Seriously, you might win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Why not? Government is the set of people we, society, put in place to do some work for us in an organized fashion.
So if there's something society at large has to do and that is not about individual action, then the government better see to it pronto. That's what people pay taxes for -- so we can have things like roads, bridges, clean water, schools, armies and action to aid the more unfortunate.
>Likely the problem you are so quick to put government in charge of, wouldn't be a problem in the first place if we had a free economy.
Yes, but also if we had free ponies. I don't deal in "what if" scenarios alluding to some perfect state of being that nobody has seen. This is the kind of economy we have, it might get more or less free, but nobody has seen a "free economy" anywhere, and I don't see such a thing coming in any conceivable time frame.
I have a right to use force in self-defense.
Therefore I have the right to hire a bodyguard to use force in my defense. (In fact it is the same right - delegated.)
Therefore we have the right to elect a sheriff to use force in our defense.
...But I do NOT have the right to beat and rob people.
Therefore, neither do I have any right to hire a bodyguard to beat and rob people.
Therefore, neither does our sheriff have any right to beat and rob people -- even if we voted for him to do so! Because you cannot delegate powers you never had.
Therefore the question isn't whether society should provide social welfare for the needy. Rather, the question is whether we have a moral right to use VIOLENCE to FORCE people to provide social welfare for the needy. (We don't.)
The only time we have a right to use violence is in defense against murderers and thieves. Once we start trying to use it to solve social problems, we end up making those problems worse, not better.
The reason you see poverty in various nations is because they do not have economic freedom and secure property rights. The nations with the worst poverty are the ones with the worst protections of rights. The nations with the lowest poverty are the nations with the best protections of rights. And note: those are also the nations who donate the most money to charity.
Government can never fix poverty by using violence to forcefully redistribute wealth. All that will do is cause worse poverty.
The best a government can do is strongly protect rights and economic freedoms -- then you will have a rich nation, which will not have poverty problems in the first place, and which will easily be able to cover the rest through private charity.
Unfortunately we do not see any governments today that respect rights and freedoms in this way, although some are better than others. But proposed solutions based on "social welfare" will only make those problems worse, not better.
You say that you do not deal in "what if" scenarios -- you say that there is no "perfect state." I agree with this. But behaving more and more like North Korea is not some magical solution either. It just makes things worse.
So how exactly is this sort of charity supposed to solve homelessness and poverty? What about all the mentally ill out on the streets, do we teach them to code and maybe to manufacture their own medications as well? Have libertarians found the solution-for-all-time to mental illness and they just aren't telling anyone?
Is this man even out of poverty at this point? There are hundreds of thousands (millions, maybe, I'm not up on the latest Apple marketing) of apps in the app store and most of them make very little money. This isn't sustainable, this is a puff piece about someone who did something nice for someone else.
Grow the hell up.
If people were more willing to do that in real life, we wouldn't have libertarians parading charity over welfare and disaster capitalism over funding relief efforts.
Unfortunately, people can waltz through life espousing selfish and socially harmful opinions and never have to face social repercussions, reinforcing the opinion, thus never having to call them into question.
Libertarians like to think they have a monopoly on rationality, but what they have a simplistic and inherently selfish ideology that values property rights over human life. Thus he is childlike in his view of the world, as it has to fit quaintly into his narrow narrative, and what follows from such story-telling to one's self are the sociopathic beliefs and behaviors inflicted on society.
Well, of all the app developers (there are now 1 million apps for iOS alone, so let's say all US developers are 100,000) how many are similar cases? 1? 2? 10?
1 such story in multiple thousands IS rate in my books.