Larry Tesler Has Died

#1

Post by drallison » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

Larry Tesler has died. Larry was in the middle of many of the most influential of Silicon Valley projects and an insightful contributor. See his Wikipedia biography for a snapshot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler

Larry Tesler Has Died
gizmodo.com

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#2

Post by falcor84 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 11:26 PM UTC

I couldn't find any corroboration of this. What happened?

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#3

Post by suyash » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 12:27 AM UTC

RIP Larry Tesler, I ran into him a few times at meetup events in Bay Area, few people knew who he was as he kept a very low profile.

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#4

Post by briancof » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 12:35 AM UTC

$TSLERQ

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#5

Post by musicale » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

Very sad, Larry Tesler was brilliant and an inspiration.

Smalltalk, copy-and-paste, the Apple Lisa/Macintosh and Newton, Object Pascal (predecessor of Delphi), Stagecast Creator... NO MODES. ;-)

Pretty sure there isn't any bit of personal computing that Larry Tesler couldn't (or didn't) help make better somehow.

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#6

Post by mark_l_watson » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

I am sorry to hear that. I once had lunch with him and John Koza (pioneer in genetic programming) around the 1994 time period.

Larry had the first book I wrote (Common Lisp book for Springer Verlag) and in a good natured way was trying to talk me into writing a book on Dylan. We kept in touch but I didn’t write a Dylan book. Talking with him and John for an hour was like getting a year’s worth of good ideas tossed at you, all at once.

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#7

Post by Scobleizer » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

Two tech legends left us this week: Larry Tesler and Bert Sutherland. Both played key roles at PARC, the research center Xerox started that sparked large chunks of what we use today.

Regarding Tesler: I sat next to him when I flew back from interviewing at Microsoft. He was in the last row on the plane. I saw his Blackberry, assumed he was a nerd. He had just left Apple, was on the committee that hired Steve Jobs. He had his fingers in so much of the tech that we use today from object oriented programming to the Newton that set the stage for the iPhone.

Sutherland participated in the creation of the personal computer, the tech of microprocessors, the Smalltalk and Java programming languages, and much more.

Huge losses for our industry.

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#8

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #2

I couldn't find any corroboration of this. What happened?

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/02/19/larry-tesler-who-...

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#9

Post by tobr » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

Larry Tesler was really convinced of the merits of modeless interfaces. He even got “NOMODES” on his license plate.

https://queeniehui.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/designing-intera...

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#10

Post by loquor » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

I remember his mention in Bret Victor's talk, Inventing on Principle. He is known for cut copy paste, but he did far more than that. He introduced a single 'mode' for working for docs, as opposed to having typing, editing, formatting modes. He lived his entire life by the 'nomodes' ethos; that's his twitter handle to boot. I really respect that.