I met Larry in about 1992 when I went to work on the Newton project. I had seen him around Apple before, and I knew who he was and what he was known for, but I didn't actually meet him until I joined the Newton team. I found him friendly, modest, smart, shrewd, compassionate, full of interesting knowledge and ideas, and interested in other people and their ideas.
I got to know him better when John Sculley ordered him to have the Newton team ditch its Lisp OS and write one in C++. Larry approached me and a couple of other Lisp hackers and asked us to make a fresh start with Lisp and see what we could do on Newton. We wrote an experimental OS that Matt Maclaurin named "bauhaus".
Larry had a sabbatical coming up right about then. He took it with us. He crammed into a conference room with three or four of us and hacked Lisp code for six weeks. He was a solid Lisp hacker. He stayed up late with us and wrote AI infrastructure for the experimental OS, then handed it off to me when he had to, as he put it, "put his executive hat back on." He hung around with us brainstorming and arguing about ideas. He had us out to his house for dinner.
A little later, when things were hectic and pressure was high on Newton, one of our colleagues killed himself. Larry roamed the halls stopping to talk to people about how they were doing. I was at my desk when he came by, next to another colleague that I considered a friend. Larry stopped by to check on us. My friend had also been a good friend of the fellow who had died, and he lost his composure. Larry grabbed a chair, pulled it up close and sat with him, an arm around him, patting him gently while his grief ran its course.
After Newton was released, Larry moved on to other projects. I worked on the shipped product for a while, but I was pretty burned out. Steve Jobs persuaded me to go to work for NeXT for a little while.
Steve is infamous for being, let's say, not as pleasant as Larry. In fact, he sat in my office once trashing Larry for about half an hour, for no good reason, as far as I can see. I politely disagreed with a number of his points. Larry made important contributions to the development of personal computing, and he didn't have to be a jerk to do it.
Larry was extremely smart, but I never knew him to play I'm-smarter-than-you games. I saw him encourage other people to pursue, develop, and share their ideas. I found him eager to learn new things, and more interested in what good we could do than in who got the credit for it.
We weren't close friends, except maybe when we were crammed in a conference room together for six weeks. I didn't see him much after Newton, though we exchanged the occasional friendly email over the years.
I was just thinking lately that it was about time to say hello to him again. Oops.
Larry Tesler was one of the best people I met in Silicon Valley. He was one of the best people I've met, period. I'll miss him.
This is the sort of environment I had always envisioned growing up dreaming of being a software professional
I've lost some colleagues along the way too you never know when it's going to happen every chance to speak should be treated with the respect of knowing it could very well be the last chance to make a connection
(I'm having trouble with this seeming to be a feel-good anecdote about a high-pressure working environment in which people are burning out and killing themselves.)
I suppose that, in part, it's exactly what you say it is.
If it's a feel-good story, I think that must be because I feel good to have had the opportunity to meet and work with Larry Tesler. He impressed me with his intelligence, his generosity, and his compassion. I feel that I'm better for having known him, and I suppose that comes through in my account.
You're right: Newton was a pressure cooker. Larry didn't put that pressure on us, though. We put it on ourselves. We got the idea that there was an outside chance of making something great, and we pursued that dream as hard as we could. Some of us--I include myself--were intemperate in that pursuit, and it cost us.
Now, the pursuit of greatness is a species of vanity, and vanity is a cruel and fickle master. But in Newton's case, at least, I think those of us who were seduced by that vanity have only ourselves to blame.
Your second point may be one reason why, whenever I think of Larry, I also think of Steve Jobs.
Steve was infamous for riding roughshod over employees in pursuit of making something great.
Larry's example shows that such treatment is not necessary to get people's best work. If you can't get great work out of people without abuse, that's your own limitations showing; it's not a law of nature.
I suppose I also think of Steve because I met and worked for Larry and Steve in the same fairly short period of time, and because both projects were high-risk, low-percentage attempts to create something great. Also, perhaps, because Steve was opinionated about Larry and I argued with him about it.
This is a great story, definitely made things a little dusty for me. Thanks for sharing. My own experience with him was also special - he was such an amazing kind, generous, and insightful person. And he would easily qualify for my "ten smartest people I've ever met" list if I was the sort of person who made such lists :-)
Having worked on the Newton you might get a kick out of this - when I was in high school there was a guy still using one with a WiFi PCMCIA card, probably straight up to when the iPhone launched. I imagine he jumped to a smartphone eventually, but he was still on the Newton in 2006.
The released one wasn't. Its OS was written in C++ and its apps were written in Newtonscript, which was an interpreted language that loosely resembled Javascript (but well before Javascript was created).
The first Newton OS was written in Lisp (specifically in a dialect called Ralph, which was basically Scheme plus CLOS) over a C++ microkernel.
By the way, that Lisp was written by Apple Cambridge, a group in Apple that was created when Larry arranged for Apple to purchase the assets of Coral Software and hire some of its best hackers to design a new programming language.
Apple later spun out that group to create Digitool, which took with it the code and the rights to Macintosh Common Lisp. Digitool did not prosper, and one of its employees, Gary Byers, negotiated the rights to turn the MCL compiler into an open-source implementation that later became Clozure Common Lisp. So Larry is also responsible for the creation of Clozure Associates and Clozure Common Lisp.
There were some issues with the first Newton OS that led to two developments:
1. John Sculley ordered Larry Tesler to redo the OS in C++. That's the version that shipped.
2. Larry asked me and a few other Lisp hackers to see what we could do on Newton with Ralph. That resulted in the bauhaus OS, which didn't ship.
The authors of the first Newton OS were smart programmers, but they weren't Lisp hackers. Larry speculated that that had something to do with some of the early issues, and maybe it did. I think our version offered some improvements.
Another set of issues had to do with the UI design of the initial OS. Larry was critical of it on the grounds that it was basically trying to be a desktop UI in a handheld device. He thought we should try for a UI experience more suited to a new kind of device, and, in the end, both the shipping OS and the bauhaus OS did what he asked, and were better for it.
(In a final evaluation meeting for bauhaus, our managers told us that we had met and exceeded all goals of our experimental project, but Apple was of course going to ship the OS that the CEO told us to ship, and it was of course not going to ship two OSes for the device. None of this was a surprise to the bauhaus team. We were grateful to have had the support to work on the project for as long as we did, and disappointed that it was over.)
I got to know him better when John Sculley ordered him to have the Newton team ditch its Lisp OS and write one in C++. Larry approached me and a couple of other Lisp hackers and asked us to make a fresh start with Lisp and see what we could do on Newton. We wrote an experimental OS that Matt Maclaurin named "bauhaus".
Larry had a sabbatical coming up right about then. He took it with us. He crammed into a conference room with three or four of us and hacked Lisp code for six weeks. He was a solid Lisp hacker. He stayed up late with us and wrote AI infrastructure for the experimental OS, then handed it off to me when he had to, as he put it, "put his executive hat back on." He hung around with us brainstorming and arguing about ideas. He had us out to his house for dinner.
A little later, when things were hectic and pressure was high on Newton, one of our colleagues killed himself. Larry roamed the halls stopping to talk to people about how they were doing. I was at my desk when he came by, next to another colleague that I considered a friend. Larry stopped by to check on us. My friend had also been a good friend of the fellow who had died, and he lost his composure. Larry grabbed a chair, pulled it up close and sat with him, an arm around him, patting him gently while his grief ran its course.
After Newton was released, Larry moved on to other projects. I worked on the shipped product for a while, but I was pretty burned out. Steve Jobs persuaded me to go to work for NeXT for a little while.
Steve is infamous for being, let's say, not as pleasant as Larry. In fact, he sat in my office once trashing Larry for about half an hour, for no good reason, as far as I can see. I politely disagreed with a number of his points. Larry made important contributions to the development of personal computing, and he didn't have to be a jerk to do it.
Larry was extremely smart, but I never knew him to play I'm-smarter-than-you games. I saw him encourage other people to pursue, develop, and share their ideas. I found him eager to learn new things, and more interested in what good we could do than in who got the credit for it.
We weren't close friends, except maybe when we were crammed in a conference room together for six weeks. I didn't see him much after Newton, though we exchanged the occasional friendly email over the years.
I was just thinking lately that it was about time to say hello to him again. Oops.
Larry Tesler was one of the best people I met in Silicon Valley. He was one of the best people I've met, period. I'll miss him.