It doesn't really even take 21st century hardware. I remember running TeX on a Silicon Graphics workstation back in the early 90s. The processing was so fast, I

It doesn't really even take 21st century hardware. I remember running TeX on a Silicon Graphics workstation back in the early 90s. The processing was so fast, I didn't realize it had happened. If you consider the hardware restrictions that TeX and MF were written under in the late 70s/early 80s, it makes the system that much more impressive. The WEB source code of these is an education in itself.