[Openmcl-devel] RIP Larry Tesler

[Toomas Altosaar]

Interesting learning about Larry Tesler’s work and influence.
Now I know who else (besides all you guys and Gail) to be thankful for.

From: Openmcl-devel <openmcl-devel-bounces at clozure.com> On Behalf Of Jeremy Jones
Sent: torstai 20. helmikuuta 2020 2.58
To: Andrew Shalit <alms at clozure.com>
Cc: openmcl-devel <openmcl-devel at clozure.com>
Subject: Re: [Openmcl-devel] RIP Larry Tesler

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Thanks Andrew. Larry was a great man.

Not only is he responsible for starting the Dylan project, but he is responsible for the Apple acquisition of Coral and the ongoing development of MCL.

I became friends with Larry while I was an intern at Xerox Parc in the summer of 1978. Among many other things, Larry invented the Smalltalk browser. That was the first time I heard the word "browser".

Years later in 1988, Coral was going through a hard time. Our best hackers, Gary Byers and Gail Zacharias, had quit because of a disagreement with management and the future of MCL and Coral was in grave danger.

During this time, I called up Larry and we met for breakfast. I asked him flat out, "Would Apple be interested in acquiring Coral?" He sat back and and said "maybe... We're interested in developing a new programming language and we need a crack team of developers."

The rest is history. Larry started project Beans which ended with the acquisition of of Coral just before the end of 1988. The Apple Cambridge lab was started in January 1989 with five developers from Coral (Gary Byers, Jeremy Jones, Andrew Shalit, Richard Mlynarik, and Gail Zacharias). Gary kept working on MCL and the rest of us started designing and implementing the programming language Ralph which became Dylan.

The Cambridge lab and our accomplishments were a direct result of Larry's vision and hard work.

On Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:25 PM Andrew Shalit <alms at clozure.com<mailto:alms at clozure.com>> wrote:
Forwarding, because I think others would be interested. (Plus there’s a notable contribution by our very own Mikel Evins.)



On Feb 19, 2020, at 4:49 PM, Shannon Spires <svs at bearlanding.com<mailto:svs at bearlanding.com>> wrote:

Hacker News discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361282<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fitem%3Fid%3D22361282&data=02%7C01%7C%7C4290f29eba6049742db008d7b59ff94c%7C372ee9e09ce04033a64ac07073a91ecd%7C0%7C1%7C637177570994737828&sdata=qeoLq%2Bi%2BgW1805dDguOL7x68mK6QpWBdxrYC04a%2BTIg%3D&reserved=0>

On Feb 19, 2020, at 2:37 PM, Andrew Shalit <alms at clozure.com<mailto:alms at clozure.com>> wrote:

News came today that Larry Tesler has died.

Larry was the head of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group in the 1980s.  He spearheaded Apple's acquisition of Coral Software, which allowed MCL to survive and eventually become CCL. That acquisition also led to the creation of the Dylan programming language.

In his work at Xerox PARC and then at Apple, Larry played a central role in the creation of the computer interfaces that we’re all so familiar with today.

You can read more about him at https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/02/19/larry-tesler-rip<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdaringfireball.net%2Flinked%2F2020%2F02%2F19%2Flarry-tesler-rip&data=02%7C01%7C%7C4290f29eba6049742db008d7b59ff94c%7C372ee9e09ce04033a64ac07073a91ecd%7C0%7C1%7C637177570994737828&sdata=PSsPzF9My2WqK2m2X9gFJG9%2FLiSWFkvcDop9N%2Fsx8ZU%3D&reserved=0>


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