After three months, 3 621 lines of code and hundreds of hours of lessons, homeless man, Leo Grand, has released his first app.
Titled "Trees for Cars", the app is a tool for environmentally conscious people looking to reduce their impact on the environment by organising carpools with the people in their area.
Grand's story is part of the Journeyman Challenge, which saw software engineer Patrick McConlogue spending an hour a day teaching a homeless man how to code. The original plan was for the tutelage to last just eight weeks, but McConlogue and Grand ended up spending almost double that amount of time making Grand's app concept a reality.
In the weeks prior to the app launch, McConlogue was able to spend additional time with Grand after his boss at Noodle, an educational search engine company, agreed to allow the duo to work together on the app full time and to move their lessons into the company's offices.
"Every line of code was written for you by Leo Grand, all of the profits go to him. This is his story and his triumph," McConlogue wrote on the Journeyman Facebook page. McConlogue continued by calling on the Journeyman community to buy and share the app.
But the project was not without its snags. Some have described McConlogue's plan to teach Grand to code as a selfish attempt to turn a homeless man into a "startup experiment"; dubbing him "a 21st century asshole" attempting to weave his own "imaginary entrepreneurial novella".
And their work was nearly compromised in October when Grand was arrested and his computer was confiscated after he was found sleeping on a park bench in a park with restricted public access. But McConlogue was able to rally support from the Journeyman community and Grand was soon released.
"This is going to change my life in a magnificent way," Grand told Mashable after the Trees for Cars app was launched. "It is by far the most rewarding experience of my life," McConlogue added.
But Grand's work is not done. The budding software designer already has plans for an updated version of the app, "Trees for Cars II", and he hopes to secure a job as a programmer in the near future. And with support from programmers across the globe, McConlogue is looking to upscale the training programme.
The Trees for Cars app is available for download on iOS and Android for $0.99.
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