The pleasure of that
knowledge led me to want to do it more."
Stallman wasn't the first to equate hacking with
pleasure. Many of the hackers who staffed the AI Lab
boasted similar, incomplete academic r?sum?s. Most had
come in pursuing degrees in math or electrical
engineering only to surrender their academic careers
and professional ambitions to the sheer exhilaration
that came with solving problems never before addressed.
Like St. Thomas Aquinas, the scholastic known for
working so long on his theological summae that he
sometimes achieved spiritual visions, hackers reached
transcendent internal states through sheer mental focus
and physical exhaustion. Although Stallman shunned
drugs, like most hackers, he enjoyed the "high" that
came near the end of a 20-hour coding bender.
Perhaps the most enjoyable emotion, however, was the
sense of personal fulfillment. When it came to hacking,
Stallman was a natural. A childhood's worth of
late-night study sessions gave him the ability to work
long hours with little sleep.
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