Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

17Summer CampKEN Williams came to rely on people like John Harris, Third Generation hackersinfluenced not so much by Robert Heinlein or Doc Smith as by Galaxian,Dungeons and Dragons, and Star Wars. A whole subculture of creative, gamedesigninghacker-programmers was blooming, beyond the reach of executiveheadhunters. They were mostly still in high school.To lure young programmers to Coarsegold, Williams took out ads in the LosAngeles Times tempting programmers to "Boot into Yosemite." Typical of thereplies was a man who told Ken, "My son's a great Apple programmer and wouldlike working with you." "Why don't you let me talk to your son?" Ken asked. Theman told him that his son didn't come across well on the phone. At the jobinterview at Oakhurst, the man insisted on answering all the questions for his son, asmall, round-eyed, sixteen-year-old blond who had peach-fuzz on his cheeks andseemed intimidated by the entire situation. None of this mattered when Kendiscovered the kid was capable of grasping the intricacies of Apple assemblylanguage. Ken hired him for three dollars an hour.Slowly, Ken Williams began to fill up the house he bought in the Sierra Sky Rancharea, just beyond Oakhurst where Route 41 starts climbing to elevations of overfive thousand feet. Besides free rent, there were Ken's impromptu graphicstutorials. Ken was now known as a certified Apple wizard. He could turn on hishacker inquisitiveness almost on whim. He refused to accept what othersconsidered generic limitations on the Apple. He would use page-flipping, exclusiveor-ing,masking technique ... anything to get something up on the screen. Whenlooking at someone else's program, he could smell a problem, circle around it, getto the heart of the matter, and come up with a solution.On-Line's corporate headquarters in 1981 was the second floor of a dark brownwood-frame structure on Route 41 whose ground floor housed a stationery storeand a little print shop. You entered the office after climbing a flight of stairs on theoutside of the building; you had to go outside past the staircase to go to thebathroom. Inside the office were a group of desks, fewer desks than there were