I’m feeling sad right now and absorbing some bad news. Today, I found out that Larry Tesler passed away.

If you don’t know who Larry is, he was a computer scientist in the field of human-computer interaction and worked at Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo. He’s also known as the inventor of modeless text editing, cut/copy & paste, find & replace, and more.

We have Larry to thank for many of the ways we interact with our computers and smartphones, due to his research at PARC and Apple.

The loss is personal for me. Larry was working at Apple when I was there. His legacy was already considerable. I left the year after he did.

I was a young designer who only knew of him. I never worked with him at Apple. But, as fate would have it, I did get another chance to work with Larry later.

When I joined Yahoo, Larry was heading up the entire Design organization for the company. It was a special time, and I remember feeling like Design had a significant role and influence at Yahoo.

I ended up rep…