Larry Tesler

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Larry Tesler

Lawrence Gordon (Larry) Tesler (born April 24, 1945) is a computer scientist working in the field of human-computer interaction. Tesler has worked at Xerox PARC, Apple Computer, Amazon.com, and Yahoo!

Tesler studied computer science at Stanford University in the 1960s, and worked for a time at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. From 1973 to 1980, he was at Xerox PARC, where, among other things, he worked on the Gypsy word processor and Smalltalk.

In 1980, Tesler moved to Apple Computer, where he held various positions, including Vice President of AppleNet, Vice President of the Advanced Technology Group, and Chief Scientist. He worked on the Lisa team, and was enthusiastic about the development of the Apple Macintosh as the successor to the Lisa.

In 1985, Tesler worked with Niklaus Wirth to add object-oriented language extensions to the Pascal programming language, calling the new language Object Pascal. He also was instrumental in developing MacApp, one of the first class libraries for application development. Eventually, these two technologies became shipping Apple products.

Starting in 1990, Tesler led the efforts to develop the Apple Newton, initially as Vice President of the Advanced Development Group, and then as Vice President of the Personal Interactive Electronics division.

In 1991, he contributed the article "Networked Computing in the 1990s" to Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks, September, 1991.

Tesler left Apple in 1997 to co-found Stagecast Software, which allowed him to apply his enthusiasm for kids' programming and use of computers, an enthusiasm he acquired mainly at Xerox PARC, where he worked in Alan Kay's Learning Research Group.

Tesler joined Amazon.com in 2001; in 2004, he became the company's Vice President of Shopping Experience. In 2005, he joined Yahoo! as Vice President of Yahoo!'s User Experience and Design group.

Tesler is on the board of the Gorilla Foundation.

Tesler has a strong preference for modeless software, in which a user action has a consistent effect, rather than changing its meaning dependent on previous actions, as in the vi text editor. As as example of this preference, as of 2007 Tesler's Subaru automobile has a personalized California license plate with the license number "NO MODES". He has used this license number since about 1980.