As a social outcast since
age 10, he had little difficulty working alone. And as
a mathematician with built-in gift for logic and
foresight, Stallman possessed the ability to circumvent
design barriers that left most hackers spinning their wheels.
"He was special," recalls Gerald Sussman, an MIT
faculty member and former AI Lab researcher. Describing
Stallman as a "clear thinker and a clear designer,"
Sussman employed Stallman as a research-project
assistant beginning in 1975. The project was complex,
involving the creation of an AI program that could
analyze circuit diagrams. Not only did it involve an
expert's command of Lisp, a programming language built
specifically for AI applications, but it also required
an understanding of how a human might approach the same task.
When he wasn't working on official projects such as
Sussman's automated circuit-analysis program, Stallman
devoted his time to pet projects. It was in a hacker's
best interest to improve the lab's software
infrastructure, and one of Stallman's biggest pet
projects during this period was the lab's editor
program TECO.
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