<BEGIN> Already renowned for his work with Emacs, Stallman's ability to match the output of an entire team of Symbolics program- mers - a team that included more than a few legendary hackers itself - still stands as one of the major human accomplishments of the In- formation Age, or of any age for that matter. Dubbing it a "master hack" and Stallman himself a "virtual John Henry of computer code," author Steven Levy notes that many of his Symbolics-employed rivals had no choice but to pay their idealistic former comrade grudging re- spect. Levy quotes Bill Gosper, a hacker who eventually went to work for Symbolics in the company's Palo Alto office, expressing amazement over Stallman's output during this period:
I can see something Stallman wrote, and I might decide it was bad (probably not, but somebody could convince me it was bad), and I would still say, "But wait a minute - Stallman doesn't have anybody to argue with all night over there. He's working alone! It's incredible anyone could do this alone!" 16 <END>