Homeless to hacker: How the Maker Movement changed one man’s life

This is a very feel good type article. A couple of things have glaring red flags for me:<p>"His ideas are in various stages of development and include a food delivery service, a laser company, and a hardware accelerator program."<p>This tells me that he has all of these "ideas" but no actual expertise in any of these areas. How often have you heard some "bro" say they have a great idea in some field which they don't know anything about.<p>"Whatever he does next, Roth intends to hire from within the homeless community, which he views as a hotbed of untapped talent."<p>I'm sure there are some very smart homeless people out there, but you need skills in relevant technologies to be a successful worker in the type of companies hes wants to start. Food delivery might be easy for the homeless to pick up, Optoelectronics on the other hand not so much.<p>Good on the guy for learning some valuable skills, turning his life around and helping the homeless. Lets just try and be a little bit realistic about whats going on here though.

Fantastic piece! This should be required reading in all high school (or earlier) together with pg's essay "How to Make Wealth" (<a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html</a>):<p>Kids know, without knowing they know, that they can create wealth. If you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you make one. But kids are so bad at making things that they consider home-made presents to be a distinct, inferior, sort of thing to store-bought ones-- a mere expression of the proverbial thought that counts. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a resale market.<p>As he points out, most everyone loses this innate understanding of creating wealth, making stuff, as they grow older. This guy has rediscovered it.<p>Oc course, this would have been impossible without the enabler of shared space, so we should have more of these.