Per Bothner makes the big time

Wed Jun 9 14:13:00 GMT 1999

> So you're one of the nameless slaves who actually wrote most of TeX.

No; I helped *port* Metafont. I wrote a large part of the 68k backend
of the Pascal compiler used to compile Metafont; I wrote some routines
to display preview images; I debugged the port, usually finding bugs
in the compiler or runtime, but sometimes in Metafont itself; I did
various tasks to help the class get going.
Knuth definitely wrote most of the code himself, at least for
the Metafont re-write, for which I have pesonal knowledge. However,
some of his students (such as Michael Plass and John Hobby) did work
on the algorithms used in TeX and Metafont. He also did have a
programmer (David something) working for him at one point, but not
as I recall at the time of the Metafont re-write.
(I realize the question was meant as a joke, but I still thought it
best to clarify for the record.)
-- 
	--Per Bothner
bothner@pacbell.net http://home.pacbell.net/bothner/