Martin Odersky is a German computer scientist and professor of programming methods at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He specializes in code analysis and programming languages. He spearheaded the design of Scala and Generic Java.

In 1989, he received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich under the supervision of Niklaus Wirth, who is best known as the designer of several programming languages, including Pascal. He did postdoctoral work at IBM and Yale University.

In 1997, he implemented the GJ compiler, and his implementation became the basis of javac, the Java compiler.

In 2002, he and others began working on Scala which had its first public release in 2003.

In 2007, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

On 12 May 2011, Odersky and collaborators launched Typesafe Inc. (renamed Lightbend Inc., February 2016), a company to provide commercial support, training, and services for Scala.

He teaches three courses on the Coursera online learning platform: Functional Programming Principles in Scala, Functional Program Design in Scala and Programming Reactive Systems.

Roberto Ierusalimschy is a legend:  he is the designer and main implementer of Lua, the de facto standard for scripting languages used in video games such as Roblox, World of Warcraft and many others. More than his (incredible) stories, his (equally incredible) insights, what sets Roberto aside is his light-hearted attitude to sharing his work with the masses, and his unique sense of humor. A wonderful interview of an inspiring personality!

Over his career, Walter Bright has accomplished many wonderful things, his most notable work being the D programming language. In this episode Walter discusses his life's work, including how he embarked upon the creation of the D language and also his work creating the Zortech C++ compiler. 

At just 30 years old, Nora has achieved some things that some people would not achieve in their entire lifetime. After studying at the University of Chicago, Nora went on to study at the Recurse Centre in New York, where she expanded her knowledge of compilers. In this episode, Nora will talk about her book  “Writing a C Compiler” which will be published next year.

Cliff Click wrote his first compiler at just 15 years old. During his career Cliff has proceeded to write the Java HotSpot JIT compiler. This compiler was one of the very first of its kind, which gracefully brought Java into the mainstream in the manner it is used today, which Cliff will discuss in this episode.

Manuel Serrano is a researcher at INRIA in Sophia Antipolis, where he focuses on language design and implementation of high-level programming languages. In this episode, among other topics, he will discuss his work on the development of his ahead of time Javascript compiler.

Leandro Melo, from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, first began his studies in control and automaton engineering before realising that his true passion lay in compiler technology. During his career he has worked intensively with the C++ language, including his work on the Nokia Qt IDE project. In this episode he will discuss his transition to compiler engineering and some of the challenges he has faced.

Gerard Berry is a pioneer of compiler technology for safety-critical systems. He began his studies in computer science all the way back in 1968. Gerard has watched software technology grow into what it is today - he has seen it all, and then some. In this episode he will discuss the history, infancy, and development of his very own language, ESTEREL.