Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. In a New York City programmer's version of this parable, fishing is coding.

Each day on his way to work, Patrick McConlogue noticed a homeless man near the Hudson River. McConlogue, who describes himself as a entrepreneur, programmer, designer and social media strategist on his digital resume, devised a plan to offer the homeless man a choice between $100 in cash or coding lessons for an hour per day over the course of two months.

"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 wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

In the blog post, McConlogue promised to follow up with the man's response, whom he called "The Journeyman Hacker."

But before he could get to that point, the Internet began tearing apart McConlogue's approach. Skeptics called the plan, among other things, "tone-deaf" and a problem of "pure Kantian ethics."

Critics also took aim at the post's title: "Finding the unjustly homeless, and teaching them to code."

This isn't the first time the Internet has looked down upon attempts to help the homeless. After a project based in Massachusetts announced plans to replace the handwritten signs of homeless people with beautifully designed recreations, Betabeat equated the efforts to “treating homeless people like algorithms to be solved.”

Despite criticisms, however, McConlogue proceeded as planned. On Thursday, he posted his promised update. McConlogue learned that the Journeyman Hacker's real name was Leo and described him as a "genius particularly concerned with environment issues."

Leo, as you probably guessed, accepted the coding lessons instead of the $100. Per the agreement, McConlogue would provide Leo with a Samsung Chromebook with 3G, a solar charger, three levels of JavaScript instructional books (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and "something to hide the laptop in."

The two commenced lessons on Monday morning. McConlogue described his outreach as "both a matter of necessity and a matter of the heart."

"While there is a lot of potential in technology, there is unlimited potential in someone who is willing to learn," he wrote in an email to Mashable.

McConlogue started a Facebook page for Leo titled "Journeyman," which has amassed more than 20,000 Likes in four days. Starting Monday, Leo will take control of updating the page. McConlogue said to expect Leo's first post on Monday afternoon, detailing the project he is working on.

Below, a picture posted on Facebook shows McConlogue (right) with his new pupil.

What do you think of McConlogue's plan? Is it noble or misguided? Share your opinion below.

Images: Flickr, hackNY.org and Facebook, Journeyman