[sokoloff]

On the other side, back in college to earn extra money, I was his typist for around 10 hours (3 or so hours at a stint), meaning he sat diagonally behind me, reading the screen I was typing on. The only thing I noticed was his hair was a little wild.

That was a few decades ago, so perhaps things have changed, but he was well within normal odor back in the early 90s.

[pcl]

What were you typing for him?

[sokoloff]

Everything. He would sit behind me and dictate keystrokes (mostly driving emacs, of course) to do email, edit code, and generally operate the computer. I don't want to talk about someone else's medical situation, but I think it's well-enough-known that rms had a period of RSI so severe that he was barred from using a keyboard to let his wrists/hands recover.

A few hours in a row of hearing and typing C-Space C-u 2 4 M-w C-x C-b <RET> C-y C-x C-s is exhausting. It was also amusing (in retrospect) to get a polite-enough admonishment to "don't think about what the keystrokes are doing; please just type what I say" when he could tell that I was slowing down because I was paying too much attention to what the intent behind the keystrokes was.

[pcl]

Wow that must have been fascinating. Did you end up learning a ton of emacs-fu along the way, or did it sorta start to just flow through you?

If I were in either of your shoes (sandals?) in that situation, I’m sure I would be super frustrated all the time. Impressive on both your parts.

[sokoloff]

I learned a lot, but I wish I could have gutted it out for longer in order to learn more about emacs and gcc internals. (I knew "we" were doing some maintenance on gcc because I remember asking questions about a comment that said "this is a win" and asking rms if we were working on gnu chess and him telling me that it was a compiler optimization. [Yeah, that's how amazingly skilled I was at the time.])

I ended up doing 4 sessions totaling about 10 hours and when I told him I was quitting, I was apologetic that I felt like I'd wasted his time quitting so soon after starting. His response I can remember to this day and it was something like "Don't worry about it; most people quit after the first session. You helped me out and we'll make sure you get your check."

[frantathefranta]

That's amazing, it feels similar to people playing chess in movies (not sure if it happens in real life) without the board, just remembering the positions.