This belief was subtly manifest. Rarely would a hacker try to
impose a view of the myriad advantages of the computer way of
knowledge to an outsider. Yet this premise dominated the
everyday behavior of the TX-0 hackers, as well as the generations
of hackers that came after them.
Surely the computer had changed THEIR lives, enriched their
lives, given their lives focus, made their lives adventurous. It
had made them masters of a certain slice of fate. Peter Samson
later said, "We did it twenty-five to thirty percent for the sake
of doing it because it was something we could do and do well, and
sixty percent for the sake of having something which was in its
metaphorical way alive, our offspring, which would do things on
its own when we were finished. That's the great thing about
programming, the magical appeal it has . . . Once you fix a
behavioral problem [a computer or program] has, it's fixed
forever, and it is exactly an image of what you meant."