Larry Tesler

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Larry Tesler (2007)

Lawrence Gordon "Larry" Tesler (born April 24, 1945 in the Bronx , New York City , New York ; died February 16, 2020 in Portola Valley , California ) was an American computer scientist who worked in the field of human Machine interface researched. He has worked at Xerox PARC , Apple , Amazon and Yahoo! worked.

biography

Tesler grew up in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1961 . He then studied computer science at Stanford University , where he then worked at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . With Horace Enea he developed the functional programming language Compel .

In the late 1960s he worked at Midpeninsula Free University , teaching on topics such as "How to end the IBM Monopoly", "Computers Now" and procrastination .

From 1973 to 1980 Tesler worked at Xerox PARC, where he worked in particular on the Gypsy word processor and Smalltalk . Together with Tim Mott he developed the principle of copy and paste .

In 1980 he switched to Apple Computer. There he was Chief Scientist and Vice President responsible for AppleNet and the Advanced Technology Group . The development of the Lisa and Macintosh systems was significantly influenced by him.

From the beginning of 1985, Tesler, in collaboration with Niklaus Wirth, expanded the Pascal programming language to include object-oriented constructs, from which the Object Pascal language emerged . On this basis he developed the MacApp class library and development environment. From 1990 Tesler headed the development of the Apple Newton .

Tesler left Apple in 1997 to start Stagecast Software . From 2001 he worked at Amazon, from 2005 at Yahoo !, where he was Vice President of the User Experience and Design Group .

In November 2008, Tesler left Yahoo! to work for the biotechnology company 23andMe . Since December 2008 he has been an independent consultant.

Larry Tesler died on February 16, 2020 at the age of 74.

Tesler's agenda

Tesler was strongly committed to amodal software, in which user interactions have consistent effects without their meaning depending on previous actions, as is the case with the vi editor, for example . The Gypsy editor he developed , for example, provided a “Click and Type” interface that made it possible to insert text at the current cursor at any time or to reposition the latter with a click of the mouse. This operating mode is common today, but it was revolutionary in the 1970s, when it was necessary to constantly switch between an input and a command mode. To propagate his attitude, Tesler equipped his Subaru with a personalized Californian license plate with the registration number "NO MODES". Similar to others, he also used the phrase "Don't Mode Me In" to advocate the elimination of modes.

Web links

Commons : Larry Tesler  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. John Markoff: Lawrence Tesler, Who Made Personal Computing Easier, Dies at 74. In: The New York Times , February 20, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  2. ^ LG Tesler, Horace Enea: A language design for concurrent processes . In: AFIPS '68 (Spring) Proceedings of the April 30 - May 2, 1968, spring joint computer conference . April 1968, pp. 403-408. doi : 10.1145 / 1468075.1468134 .
  3. Jim Wolpman: Alive in the 60s: The Midpeninsula Free University . Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  4. ^ Larry Tesler personal home page, CV
  5. Cameron Crotty: Tesler attacks Internet (Apple VP Larry Tesler speaks at Worldwide Developers Conference about Apple's Internet strategy) . In: Macworld , July 1, 1996. 
  6. Yahoo! Appoints Larry Tesler Head of User Experience and Design . In: Business Wire , May 10, 2005. Retrieved May 14, 2009. 
  7. ^ Vi, command and input modes . Retrieved August 3, 2016.
  8. ^ Larry Tesler: The Smalltalk Environment . In: Byte Magazine . 6, No. 8, 1981, p. 90.
  9. ^ Origins of the Apple Human Interface . Archived from the original on May 11, 2004. Retrieved April 1, 2014. by Larry Tesler, Chris Espinosa