D: Interview with Walter Bright
According to his home page, Walter Bright was trained as a mechanical engineer, and has worked for Boeing on the 757 stabilizer trim system. Ever since this experience however, he has been writing software, and has a particular interest in compilers. We chat to Walter about D and his desire to improve on systems programming languages. What prompted the development of D? Being a compiler developer, there’s always at the back of my mind the impetus for applying what I know to design a better language. At my core I’m an engineer, and never can look at anything without thinking of ways to improve it. The tipping point came in 1999 when I left Symantec and found myself at a crossroad. It was the perfect opportunity to put into practice what I’d been thinking about for many years. Was there a particular problem you were trying to solve? There was no specific problem. I’d been writing code in C++ for 12 years, and had written a successful C++ compiler. This gave me a ...
